


a house built out of stone

by robpatFF



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Past Louis/Zayn, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 12:32:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/698268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robpatFF/pseuds/robpatFF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis has a used bookshop and Harry has a habit of claiming things that don't belong to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a house built out of stone

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for James, who told me to write this fic about a year ago. So here's "Tomlinbooks" for you, dude. Many, many, many thanks to Brie and Mathab for reading through this and giving me all their brilliant ideas and without them this fic would be yet another abandoned doc in my Google Drive. As always, I don't own anything but this laptop.

There are times when Louis thinks this place deserves better.

He can’t afford to fix the roof. There are leaky, amoeba-like wet patches that line the ceiling, that drip on a bad day into the buckets Louis lines up over the wood floors. Over the years he has acquired two good tables. The grain’s gone a bit grotty on both of them, gone uneven and bumpy a bit, but Louis shines them down every Saturday morning anyway, even if the polish doesn’t come through very well anymore.

His mum gave him a chair when he scraped up enough money to buy this place. The chair that had sat in their basement for years, collecting dust on the sunken in cushions. It’s his though, feels like his chair, so it sits proudly in the corner, away from the chill by the door and the water leaks. There are two chairs to match the tables. Rickety and shameful in their quality, but they earn their due. They hold Louis’ weight when he can’t reach the vents and they keep him company late at night by the lamplight, hold him upright when he falls asleep over whatever book he’s reading.

It feels like home here, the bookshop. With its mismatched furniture and leaky ceiling and creaky floors. Louis feels comfortable cramped up between the rows of books, the used and worn covers, the highlighted words that meant something to someone at one point, like most things do.

Louis gets that.

It’s a Tuesday night and the shop’s empty. It’s not unusual. The shop’s not that cozy, maybe. The heat’s too temperamental in that it doesn’t work most of the time and the leaks might put someone off. Louis thinks the drips have a bit of rhythm to them, really, something constant and steady that runs in the back of his head as he reads. 

The pages of the books in his shop are soft and worn, yellowed and used and Louis loves them fiercely. They were loved once by someone else, as most things are, loved until they were unwanted or lost or thrown away. 

Louis loves them though.

Loves them like he does the dusty shelves and the old curtains and Zayn’s paintings that they hung on the wall when they were hungover and half-asleep. Back when Louis had first gotten this place and it was empty, just filled up with expectations and hopes and bare-lined shelves, waiting to be put to use.

Louis is in the back when he hears the door chime. The bell is nothing but rusted copper, but the sound echoes all the way to the back. Louis scrambles up from his place at the floor. He’s made a lounge of sorts back here, got a smushed beanbag chair and blankets and a lamp he found in London once. A quirky sort of thing that fits in quite nicely with the rest of his misfit shop. Louis flicks it off on his way out. 

It must be cold out, with how this boy in Louis’ shop has got his scarf wrapped around his neck and his hat pulled down low on his head. Louis feels the lingering effects of the weather when he steps into the main part of the shop, his bare feet connecting with the chilled wood and the goosebumps rising on his arms. His jumper does nothing to fight the shivers crawling up his spine, and he feels a minute of envy over this boy, the warm, thick material of his coat and his boots.

“Y’alright, mate?” Louis asks. He hunches in a bit and crosses his arms, huddling in his own body heat. 

The kid starts shedding layers, unwinding his scarf and pulling his hat off his head. He’s got a shock of curls to keep him warm now, got one of those thick knit jumpers hanging loose against his torso when he gathers his coat up in arms. 

“Have you got anywhere I can sit and work?” he says. He’s got textbooks in his hands too, those dense, chunky things that make Louis remember all the reasons why he left university, make him remember why he’s stuck in a cold, damp bookshop with only faded black ink to keep him company. “I just need some quiet for a bit, you know? I’ll, like, buy something if I need to.”

His voice belies his age. It’s slow like honey and lower than Louis expects, aged beyond his flushed, dimpled cheeks and his silly hair. “’m not gonna make you buy anything,” Louis tells him. “I’ve got, like, tables you can use. For free, even.”

It’s strange to see his chairs holding someone else up. The kid drops so seamlessly into one, all awkward, young grace with his gangly limbs. Louis expects the thing to collapse, to rebel, to crumple under a stranger’s weight, but it doesn’t. It creaks when the kid moves but it holds, even when he bends his knees up to his chest and hunches over the worn-down, grooved table and frowns at his textbooks.

It’s rare to have someone come inside and stay, is the thing. Louis gets collectors. People looking for used books to restore life to, people looking for rare titles and original publications. He’s used to housing someone else in his shop for only minutes at a time, an hour at the most, before the bell chimes behind them and Louis’ home is just his again. 

He clears his throat and shuffles his feet, the floor warmer now that the cold air’s had time to settle and seep back outside. “I could make tea or something,” he says. “If you’re cold.”

It seems only polite, since this boy with the textbooks and the hair has settled into Louis’ chairs. It seems like the right thing to do, because there’s a better bookshop just four blocks over, one with working heat and patched ceilings and one of those coffee nooks built into the wall, and yet this boy has chosen Louis’ home and his precariously held together chairs and his rugged, lopsided tables.

“I’m going to make tea,” says Louis decisively, and the boy smiles gratefully.

“Have you got any sugar?” he asks. “I’m going to crash in a bit if I don’t have something sweet.”

Louis’s got some sugar up the stairs, in the kitchen of his little flat that sits above his shop. He nods and takes his time going up. The flat feels less like a home than downstairs does. Louis would rather be curled up by the dusty, used pages of the books than stuck up here by himself. The air feels stale, stuffy and closed up behind drawn windows and blinds. It feels half empty still, even months after most of Zayn’s leather jackets have left the coat cupboard and the smell of smoke lingers only in the couch cushions and the rugs and the bed.

The bedroom and the kitchen might have been hit the hardest. The bed is only rumpled on one side, the covers pulled back from the pillows. The closet’s empty, because most of Louis’ clothes live on the floor. The hangers still dangle there though, swinging and bare in a sad sort of way, so Louis keeps the closet door shut. 

It’s not that Louis is pining for his relationship to come back. It’s just that the emptiness of half the flat reminds him of what was, and it’s hard to shake. He could probably change that, could fill up the closet with his own clothes and air out the lingering smell of smoke. Easy enough. But he’d rather be downstairs. Rather be in what actually feels like his home, with his books and his pages and his chairs that keep him steady, even on their shaky legs. 

The kitchen might need the most work. Louis doesn’t cook, hasn’t ever and won’t ever, but the cabinets are lined with spices and herbs and seasonings that Louis can’t really identify. There are appliances that have collected months’ worth of dust, blenders and grinders that were never really bought for Louis to use anyway. They were bought for Zayn, because he did the cooking, but Louis gets by just fine with the microwave now. 

He spends most of his time downstairs anyway, making ramen and those microwaveable meals and curling up in his chair for the night. 

So he looks past the appliances and spices in the kitchen, reaches for the sugar and cream and waits for the kettle to boil. He balances the mugs and the sugar and cream in his arms as he creaks back down the steps, his bare feet avoiding the loose panels on the stairs like a pro now.

The kid’s still boxed up in one of Louis’ chairs, his boots tucked under his scrawny, long legs and his head hunched over the table. His textbook’s nearly all highlighted, that frantic note-taking that Louis remembers well, as if lining over the words in color would make them stick in his head. 

“I brought cream down too,” he says. “I don’t know if you’re into that sort of thing.”

Warm, dry hands take the cup from Louis. The kid’s eyes are barely open but he smiles, all teeth and dimples. “’m gonna take both if that’s okay? I think this paper is sucking the life out of me.”

It feels like a desecration of sorts when he pours three packets of cream in his cup, swirling it around with the end of his pen and mixing the sugar in. The more bitter taste has always been Louis’ preference, the sting of it in the back of his throat and warming his tongue. 

“D’ya mind if I look around?” the guy asks. 

The bones in his shoulders and back pop when he stretches. The line of his torso is long and endless, like one of the Classics, like Shakespeare when it’s raining and Louis’ eyes go drowsy watching the raindrops fall against the window. 

This kid reads like a book.

“’m just getting tired of looking at my work,” he continues. “Law’s pretty dry, you know?”

Louis shrugs. His mug is comfortably warm in his hands and his feet are still cold, peeking out from under his skinnies. “Never been much of an academic myself, actually.”

“What are you, then?”

“I’m.” Louis narrows his eyes. There’s a grin on the kid’s face, probably a long life of getting under people’s skin and smiling his way out of it. He’s all teeth and dimples, ready to charm. “I’m just Louis. Who are you?”

He’s got a nice laugh, Louis supposes. Quiet and slow and sticky almost, it sticks to Louis’ skin and slips into the spaces between his bones where the tea doesn’t warm. He’s got a nice laugh. 

“I’m Harry.”

\-----

“’s a nice place here,” Harry says. “Is it just yours?”

Louis nods. There’s a swell of something like pride in his chest, ballooning out into his lungs and his heart. His place _is_ nice, because it’s his, because it’s home. “Yeah,” he says. “I bought it, like, three years ago. I still don’t really know why.”

He does know. The place had been empty, dusty and stale and unloved. Louis hadn’t had really anything but a failed stint in university, a few thousand pounds he’d worked his arse off for, and a Zayn. Zayn had more than that, of course. And maybe that’s why they went wrong. Zayn has always been so much _more_ than Louis. Zayn had boxes upon boxes of books, classics and contemporaries and so many words. It was fascinating, really, to see that many worlds and universes cramped inside things so small.

The books needed a place to live, and so did Louis and Zayn. 

The flat had been a house, but the bookshop was a home.

“What’s your favorite, then?” Harry asks. He’s got these wandering hands, the fingertips that trail over every dusty spine on the shelves, peering at the titles as he walks past. “Out of all these books, which one do you love the most?”

Louis trails behind him. It feels like his shop has expanded a bit, has made a temporary space for this boy and his silly hair and his questions. 

“I don’t think I can choose,” he says. “I love them all for different reasons.” Loves them for making him laugh and making him cry and making him feel less lonely sometimes, when the flat seems too empty and Louis pads down the steps where there are characters waiting for him, infinite worlds bound together by ink on a page. “Why would I want to choose?”

Harry pulls one of the spines out, his finger tracing over the yellowing pages, blurred from wear and overuse. “Everyone has a favorite,” he tells Louis. “That’s just the way it works.”

“Says who?”

Harry shrugs. He’s got awfully broad shoulders, expansive and wide. “Says me.” He smiles. Teeth and dimples, Louis thinks again, and he wonders how many people have gone weak over them. “I’ve got a paper due at midnight. I should probably get back to it.”

“I close up at nine,” Louis says. His cold toes press into the wood and he pulls his arms into his jumper to find a bit more warmth. “Maybe 9:15, if you’re good.”

Harry shakes his head. His curls bounce, loose and messy against his face. “You won’t let me stay?” He slips the book back on the shelf and turns to Louis. “I’ve not got anywhere else to work on it.”

Louis sighs. “Do you not have a _home_?”

“It’ll be too noisy,” Harry tells him. “Just a bunch of blokes there, you know? Please Louis, c’mon, I’ll be good.”

It’s an awfully bad idea. Louis knows that from the dimple stitched into Harry’s cheek and the slant of his mouth when he smiles like he’s already won. Louis doesn’t know if he can trust him but his shop seems to, with the way a space seems to have been made for Harry to stay a little longer into the night. 

Louis finds _Brave New World_ buried in the blankets in the backroom. He takes the blanket too, pads back out into the main shop and settles in his chair. The cushion is sunken in around Louis’ body, like after all these years it will only seat him, is only fitted for him. Harry curls himself up in one the chairs, the wood creaking unsteadily but holding and Louis breathes out something quiet like a thank you, because people will let him down but his shop never will. 

He lights the lamp by his chair, the dim glow casting just enough light so Louis can read comfortably. The big overhead lights have been turned off, and Harry works by the lamp too. The tap of his fingers on his laptop keys is as settling as the drip of the ceiling, the constant stream of quiet sounds echoing softly in Louis’ ears as he reads. 

They are both near-silent otherwise. Louis’ limbs feel languid and heavy the longer he sits there, because he’s become accustomed to falling asleep like this, held together by the smell of home that’s embedded deep in the cushions and the softness of the chair curving around him. It’s his chair, and it fits him, and Louis lets his head fall back, resting against the back as his eyes close. The book rests dutifully in his lap, and Harry types on, quiet and steady and focused.

Louis falls asleep like that. He doesn’t mean to let his guard down so much, but he does. The words of his book are tattooed on the back of his eyelids, and he lets the drip of the ceiling and Harry’s heavy, steady fingers over the keys lull him to sleep. 

His books will watch over him, he’s sure.

\-----

Louis wakes up in the middle of the night with the familiar crick in his neck. Both the lamps have been turned off, and the shop is quiet and calm, still asleep. His blanket’s been pulled up around his shoulders and his book’s been closed up and sat on the arm of the chair.

He stands up on unsteady legs, wiping sleep from his eyes and checking the door. Harry’s locked it on his way out, and and Louis breathes a little easier. 

There’s a book on the table where Harry had been working. _Farenheit 451_. There’s a note on top, quickly scribbled out in what must be Harry’s scrawl.

_I told you everyone has a favorite book. This one’s mine._

Louis tucks it under his arm along with what he’d been reading. His blanket trails behind him as he pads up the stairs to the flat. It’s too quiet up here, too still, but Louis settles on the bed anyway.

He turns on the lamp next to the bed and he reads until the exhaustion from before takes him again, and this time there’s no one there to turn off the light when Louis falls asleep. 

\-----

Zayn stops by the shop in the mornings, sometimes. It’s usually when Louis is dusting the shelves and scrubbing down the windows, the early morning sun shining too bright through the streaks. He sweeps in like smoke and sin, his hair gelled back up away from his face and his leather jacket hanging loose off his shoulders.

“Hi, babes,” he says. His arms still feel familiar wrapped around Louis, the jut of his chin fits on Louis’ shoulder and the jagged angles of his body find space against Louis’ curves. “Late night?”

Louis cleans on the mornings when he hasn’t slept well. These are more common than uncommon, but Louis has gotten used to the bone-deep exhaustion that sits heavy over his frame. It is a part of him now, like the words in his shop and the pages that fill it. He doesn’t mind so much anymore. So he cleans when it’s been particularly bad, when he closes his eyes and sees nothing but black and sleep still won’t find him. When his exhaustion takes the form of restlessness that not even a book and his chair can calm, hard as they try. And they do try.

“It’s nothing,” Louis tells him. “At least this way I can clean her up like she deserves.” 

Zayn takes the broom from Louis, nudging him a bit with his hip. “I’m gonna do this. Go read or something.”

He looks a bit silly, leathered down and gelled up and sweeping, but the shop loves him just the same. The floors creak in familiarity under his heavy boots. The drips in the ceiling send him a greeting and Zayn says one back, grabbing the bucket from behind the counter with ease and settling it down on the floor.

Louis grabs a rag from behind the counter and takes to cleaning the dust off the cash register. They work in a tandem, practiced and efficient to get the shop looking its best. Zayn hums while he works, something unfamiliar and probably not Louis’ taste, but it’s reminiscent of a time before, when Louis got to know Zayn’s little quirks more intimately.

“How long you been up, then?” Zayn asks. “I got off a flight late as hell last night and wanted to just crash here.”

Louis shrugs. He doesn’t watch the clock at night. He tells the time in pages and words and character progression. In the race towards the climax and the comedown after. Zayn taught him that, once upon a time. “I was probably awake. I would have made tea for you and everything.”

“Yeah, I just.” Zayn is many words bottled up in one person, too many thoughts and not enough time to say them all. Zayn is an entire universe hidden in a body, Louis thinks. “Yeah, I know. Next time, okay?”

“Next time,” Louis agrees.

The shop smells like cleaner eventually. The chairs rock with gratitude when Louis passes by and slides a gentle hand over their arms and legs, making sure to shine them down as good as he can, even though the wood is old and dulled and smoothed down. He and Zayn take to the shelves, wiping down between the spines and in the nooks and crannies and over the tops, as well. Zayn keeps pace under his breath with a breathy tune, something smooth and quiet that somehow plays over the steady _drip drip drip_ that’s on a constant loop in the background. 

“How long ‘til you open?” Zayn asks. 

Louis has time. The shop’s supposed to open its doors at ten every morning, but that’s a flexible thing. It’s dependent on Louis’ mood and if the shop has fully woken up yet, the books ready to share their wealth of knowledge with inquiring patrons and wandering hands. 

“Like an hour,” he supposes. 

“C’mon,” Zayn says. He strips off his jacket and folds it up in one of the chairs for safekeeping. “Let me make you breakfast or something. You’ve gotten too skinny.” 

It’s unbearably untrue. If anything, all the microwaveable food has gone straight to Louis’ belly. It makes him soft and pliant and it’s easy to smush himself into his chair at night, to curl up with his book and fall asleep burrowed in his blankets. He doesn’t say this to Zayn though, who’s already padding up the creaky steps, skipping the second and the fifth and the seventh with an extra hop up. Louis follows, but he lets his feet stomp over the less than sturdy panels, to remind himself that his home has flaws, and that’s why he loves it. 

The thing is, Louis knows how the flat looks. Half-lived in. Maybe even less than that. It’s too neat, with the exception of his clothes on the bedroom floor. The counters are too clean and the refrigerator is not well-stocked but it’s organized and it’s almost as if the flat is waiting for Louis to put everything back, to fill up the empty spaces with his own things so it can breathe again.

“Louis,” Zayn starts, but Louis shoulders past him hard, making his way into the kitchen.

“Don’t,” he says. It’s too sharp and Louis tries not to let himself get like this very often. “D’ya want tea?” he says instead, and he doesn’t wait for an answer before he’s putting the kettle on and leaning heavy against the counter. “Just shut up and let me make you some tea, okay?”

Zayn doesn’t say anything, but he molds himself to Louis’ back and rests his head on Louis’ shoulder. They watch the kettle boil, the flames under it turning orange and blue and Zayn smells like smoke, still. It’s comforting, to know that some things never change, not even the smell of cigarettes embedded in Zayn’s skin. 

The kettle starts to hiss, high and reedy and it jolts Louis. He makes Zayn’s tea up, just sugar, no cream, and his own, bitter. They sit down at the kitchen table across from each other, Zayn slumped in his chair like usual and Louis folded up into his, knees against his chest and bare feet crossed. They are old and new stitched unevenly together, the marks of their past not yet faded enough to build something entirely new. They are trying though, Louis thinks. They’re trying.

“You remember that gig I was telling you about?” Zayn says eventually. “The one here in London?”

Louis nods. He remembers the hopeful half-smile on Zayn’s face when he’d told Louis about it. He remembers the shrugging, like Zayn wasn’t sure he’d get it and Louis had no thought that he _wouldn’t_. Maybe that was their downfall, thinking too much of each other and not enough of themselves.

“You got it,” Louis asks, thought it’s more of a statement because he already knows. Knew it the first time he heard Zayn sing that he was going to be big. Larger than life, even. “You got the gig.”

“Yeah,” Zayn breathes out. It’s almost like it’s just hitting him, and maybe it is, the solidity of it now that he’s told someone else. “I. Like, I get to sing and they _pay_ me and like. People might come to see me.”

“They’ll definitely come and see you,” Louis says. “I’ll be there all the time. Your first proper groupie.”

Zayn shrugs. “So you think it’s a good idea? Like, I didn’t know if you wanted me, like. You know.”

“What? Happy?” 

Zayn slumps further down in his seat. The chairs up here are sturdy. Reliable. They don’t creak under stress and they’re too rigid, too shined and unmarked. Louis hates them.

“Close,” Zayn says. “’m gonna be around all the time now that I don’t have to travel around looking for a place that’ll let me sing and I.” He won’t stop _shrugging_ and there’s a part of Louis that wants to shake the words out of him, just to get him to quit. “Fuck, Louis, I don’t know. I didn’t know if you’d want to see me that much.”

The thing about it is that Louis will probably never stop missing Zayn. They’ve been through too much together, and just because Zayn’s not fucking him anymore doesn’t change the fact that Louis loves him. “You’re an idiot, you know? You’re still my best friend, you arsehole.”

Zayn lets out something that sounds suspiciously relieved, something shaky and fragile and they’re so breakable, the two of them. So stupidly vulnerable for each other. He’s warm and familiar when he throws himself at Louis and they cling to each other, Louis and Zayn, because one part of them is over but this part never will be. 

“Thank fuck for that,” Zayn says, somewhere buried in Louis’ neck, his bony knees digging into Louis’ thighs. “I really wasn’t looking forward to finding a new best friend anyway.”

Zayn shuffles off eventually. His quiff has flopped, his shirt a bit rumpled from where Louis had refused to let go. “’m gonna make you food now, alright?”

The kitchen smells like pancakes and eggs and all the things Zayn’s good at in no time. Louis settles into setting the table, like he used to, forks and knives and napkins and drinks. They orbit around each other, still a bit hesitant and awkward but Zayn knocks into Louis’ hip once, and some of the tension eases away. 

Zayn lights a smoke in the living room, and Louis doesn’t think about how long it’ll take to air the smell out. They make their way down the steps eventually, bellies full and Zayn buys a copy of _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ because, “I feel like I haven’t bought anything from here in ages.”

And Zayn hugs him when he leaves, right before Louis’s about to open the shop up. He smells like smoke and the kitchen and books. That distinct, crisp scent of old, worn pages that Louis thinks is impossible to wash out. “I’ll, like. I’ll tell you when I have my first show. You’ll be there, right?”

“Wouldn’t miss it, mate,” Louis says. He means it. 

And it doesn’t really feel like anything is missing when Zayn leaves. It’s strange almost, but Louis thinks the shop has made a permanent space for Zayn. In the creak of the chairs and the unsteady grooves and ridges in the table, there is room for him. Between the shelves and along the spines of his favorite books, the bookshop has etched his name. 

\-----

The shop keeps him busy. It needs to be kept clean and tidy and well-stocked. He finds old books everywhere, really. His mum had a few in the attic, originals passed down and proper dusty but treasures, all the same. Zayn had a tonne, cardboard boxes breaking down with the weight of a million universes inside them, characters demanding to be let out. To be put on a shelf for the chance of their story being told.

He finds books in coffeeshops. Where patrons have left them in the lost and found too long and Louis gets to keep them. Those places know him now. They have a box waiting for him at the end of each month, filled with coffee-scented and abandoned worlds that Louis will soon understand when he opens their covers. He loves those the most, maybe, because they are probably missed by the owners, probably searched for under sofa cushions and in the bottoms of bags.

The shop keeps him busy with all its words and pages and inked thoughts. This may be Louis’ favorite part of the job, he thinks. There was a time when he didn’t appreciate it so much. When he was younger and angrier and stupider and had just been looking for something _more_ , and Zayn had shown him that he could run away whenever he wanted, and all he had to do was open a book. 

Louis is grateful for that now, as he curls in his chair. There’s a lull in business, something he’s not unaccustomed to, so he tucks his feet up under him and reads his way through the afternoon. It’s a bit too easy to get lost in the words, and he finds himself doing just that, neck bent at a painful angle and eyes stinging from a lack of blinking. The door chime goes unnoticed as Louis reads on, shivers distractedly at the outside chill nipping at his toes and his fingers from the open door.

“Is that your favorite, then?” someone asks, and Louis drops his book, heart beating too fast in his chest and his ears ringing. 

“ _Fuck,_ ” he murmurs. “D’ya do that to everyone?”

Harry’s got on just as many layers today. His curls are loose though, wind-flipped over his forehead and his eyes. He looks like a character in a book somewhere, Louis thinks. With his dimples and his hair and the sincerity in his smile. It’s like someone dreamt him up one night, dreamt him up and left him to fend for himself. 

“I brought you something,” Harry says. He’s got a box under his arms, half-covered by the huge sleeves of his coat. “Sort of like a thank you, I guess. For the other night.”

He rests the box on Louis’ knees and waits. It’s a heavy sort of thing, wrapped up in Christmas paper, for fuck’s sake, and topped off with a bow. Louis tries to be gentle with it all, his fingers sliding under the tape and he tries to fold the paper up for safekeeping. 

It’s three boxes of Twinings. 

“You bought me tea,” Louis says stupidly. “I don’t even know you.”

Harry nudges him. His limbs are too gangly and long and he should be awkward with it all, but he’s not. “Sure you do,” Harry says. Teeth and dimples and hair. “I put you to bed that night, remember?”

“You left me in this chair,” Louis replies. He runs his fingers over the boxes. It’s the expensive kind, wrapped up with the gold trim, just waiting to be brewed and poured. He won’t say but it’s one of his favorite kinds, because Harry’s just a silly kid with too much time on his hands and a deceptively charming smile. “But thank you.”

“Hey, this is meant to be my thank you,” Harry tells him. He shoves himself into one of the other chairs, legs tucked up and too long. He’s still got his coat on, his scarf half-covering his mouth and his nose and cheeks flushed red. “You didn’t answer my question, you know.”

Louis wraps the blanket firmer round his shoulders. Harry’s brought the cold air in with him, and settles over them, sinking into the gaps in the blanket and under his sleeves. “What’s that, then?”

Harry nods at the book in Louis’ hands. He’s got _On the Road_ today, the pages soft and overworn from too many hands. Louis has to remember to be gentle with this one. “Is that your favorite?” 

There are shelves upon shelves of books in this shop. Louis hasn’t read them all, but one day he will. He can’t choose a favorite, because all of them are so different, because all of them give him a new place to hide, if just for a few hours. 

“I don’t have a favorite,” he says again. 

“Okay,” Harry tells him. He’s not giving up though, Louis can see that in the crookedness of his smile and the languid way he sprawls in one of Louis’ chairs. All irreverence and grace, this kid. “Did you read my favorite then?”

Louis has the book tucked under his pillow in the bedroom in his flat. He can only sleep down here in his chair so many nights before his neck starts to bother him, before the ache in his shoulders follows him past sunrise and during the day. So he keeps the book under his pillow in his bed, for the nights when he can’t sleep because the flat is too still and quiet and it doesn’t smell right. Doesn’t smell like books and tea and _home_ , is the thing.

“Why is it your favorite?” Louis asks him. He loves it, really. The thought of books being something forbidden and dangerous and it feels like that sometimes. Like it’s Louis and his shop full of books against the world. 

Harry shrugs broad shoulders. He seems small, Louis notices, tucked up on creaky chair legs and his fingers rubbing against the grooves of the table. “Dunno, really,” he says. “Read it once in sixth form and I thought it was, like, I don’t know. Different.”

“Very articulate for a future lawyer,” Louis says. He’s teasing, but the flush on Harry’s cheeks is nice. The way he narrows his eyes. Less hawk-eyed now, less like he’s trying to peel back Louis’ skin. “Think you might have said something deep there.”

The thing is, Harry’s got a voice like molasses. It’s heavier and stickier than honey, rolls off his tongue and Louis catches the words easy, slow as they come. He says, “Thought I’d stop off here between classes to give you your present.”

He’s nabbed _On the Road_ off Louis’ lap by now, flipping through the pages and careful of the bookmark Louis’ stuck in between them. His fingers are careful, gentle, as if he can sense the fragility of the book, can feel the wear in the spine and how thin the pages have become. 

“Have you read it?” Louis asks. Harry would fit into that world, with what little that Louis knows about him. With his languid limbs and his lazy smile, full of sincerity, crooked as it is. “’s good.” He feels lazy himself, sitting in the middle of his shop at midday, half-hidden under blankets and the sun shining in his face. 

Harry shakes his head. “D’ya mind if I borrow it?” he asks. 

“This isn’t a library.” 

“C’mon, _please_ ,” and it’s the same thing he said the other night, before Louis agreed to let him stay late, typing up steady on his laptop. “I’ll bring it back. And I’ll have something to talk to you about.” 

He tilts back on the chair, on one of Louis’ rickety, shabby old chairs that he loves. He tilts back on the hind legs, all leggy grace and cockiness, and Louis hears the creak, knows the soft wood like the back of his hand and it holds steady. Holds steady and keeps level for Harry. 

“You know,” Louis starts. “No one’s ever really sat in that chair but me. It’s tricky.”

Harry lets the chair fall, settling down with a thump back on the floor. “No it’s not,” Harry says. “Maybe it doesn’t like you.”

“It’s _my_ chair,” Louis tells him.

Harry lifts back up on the legs. He’s cocky and silly and he has too much hair. He’s a character, Louis thinks. Done up too pretty with all his bad parts tucked away in secret. “It’s my chair now,” he says decisively. “I’ve taken it from you.”

Harry claims it then. He smiles like he’s teasing but he’s got Louis’ book tucked away under his coat, got himself held up on one of Louis’ shameful, weathered down chairs. He claims a piece of Louis’ shop, and he’s teasing, but Louis can’t help but wonder if the shop will claim him back.

\-----

Harry comes between his classes.

He stomps his boots on the mat Louis puts by the door, to protect the shop from the wetness of shoes and more water damage, because the ceiling’s caused enough. He’s got a bag over his shoulder, got books peeking out from under the flap, and he looks like a proper uni student, all dressed up like this. Louis feels the urge to ruffle him up a bit from somewhere low in his belly, sudden and insistent and unfamiliar.

He swallows hard and the feeling goes away.

“’s cold,” Harry murmurs. “Hi, it’s cold.”

Louis waits for the shop to greet him, but it hasn’t yet. He watches the ceiling and listens for the creaks but they remain the same, unchanged. But Louis watches. And he listens. And he waits. Because the shop knows better than him and he will take her word, whatever it is. 

“It is winter, you know,” Louis says instead. “Maybe you should start wearing gloves.”

Harry frowns. He takes to hanging his coat up on one of the rickety chairs, the one he’s claimed as his own. It looks a bit out of place, being used by someone else, and Louis wonders how soon until Harry will bore of it, bore of Louis’ things. “I’d rather complain about it, to be honest,” Harry tells him. “Hey, have you got any tea? My hands are cold.”

Louis bounds up the steps. Skips the second and the fifth and the seventh to avoid the loose panels and pads into the kitchen of the flat. It smells like like the toast Louis burned this morning, because he hadn’t been the one to buy his toaster and the damn thing hates him.

It’s not his, is the thing. Louis only likes things that belong to him. 

The sugar’s still out from this morning, where Louis had spilt half the container in the dim light of sunrise, all the blinds closed and his eyes still adjusting to being awake. He makes a mental note to clean the flat after his next sleepless night. Won’t be soon before long, and it might make him like the place a bit more. Might make it feel more like his home, if it’s clean. 

He does a haphazard job of cleaning up the sugar while the kettle’s boiling. His feet are cold and there’s a crick in his neck from sleeping in his chair again, accidental this time. His book’s bent up from where Louis dropped it when he lost consciousness the night before, the pages wrinkled and worn from where they’d been pressed against the floor all night, forgotten. He hunches in his jumper and watches the heat from the stove, thinks about the boy downstairs waiting for him. 

He does a bang up job at that, thinking about the boy who’s entirely too young, with the spots on his face that give away his age underneath all that sure cockiness, the boy who lays claim to things that don’t belong to him.

The mugs are warm in his hands as he juggles them back down the steps. He lets his feet creak over the uneven wood this time, in acknowledgement, a hello of sorts before he disappears back down to the main shop. 

Harry’s sat up on the counter when Louis gets back. His hands are cold where they press against Louis; he’s all hands and feet and legs and he smiles with nothing but teeth when Louis hands him his mug. “Have you got any cream?”

Louis has forgotten it up the stairs. “All out,” he lies, and wonders at the careless shrug Harry gives him. Too trustworthy, maybe that’s his flaw, Louis thinks. “Will you manage without it?”

Harry shrugs again. “I’ve brought this for you,” he answers, shoving a book at Louis over the counter. “Finished it during my last class.”

“Some lawyer,” Louis tells him. 

It’s _On the Road_. It’s still got Louis’ bookmark in it, untouched as if it hasn’t belonged to someone else other than Louis for a bit. Louis runs his fingers over the pages, a habit to check the condition, to make sure the book has been taken care of.

“What did you think, then?”

Harry leans back on the counter, braces himself on his palms and smiles. “I can’t tell you, obviously. You haven’t finished.”

“You can at least tell me if you liked it,” Louis says. “Or absolutely loathed it.”

Harry shakes his head. He balances the mug on his thigh, his legs still and long and gangly against the counter. “Can’t,” he repeats. “I don’t want to bias you. ’m gonna be a lawyer, remember?” He’s a visage of raised eyebrows and cheek, this kid.

He takes his tea and hops the counter. “What have you got to read for me now?”

Louis watches him wander through the shelves. Harry’s hands are restless, his fingers running over the spines and tracing over the title of every book he passes, almost. He’s a character, Louis is sure, a character looking for the book he came from, looking for the world he belongs in. He’s too inquisitive, his eyes too wide and honest when he asks about certain books. He looks at Louis and believes what he says about each one, tilts his head and thinks before moving on. 

Louis follows him ‘round the shop and drinks his tea, the blackness of it bitter and stale and sharp in the back of his throat. Harry’s enough sugar for him, sweet and too much energy and too many limbs, shoving awkwardly through Louis’ cramped little shop.

“You have to pick one for me,” Harry says eventually. “I’ve got my next class soon, and I can’t decide.”

Louis slides past him. He knows the order of the books by rote, and his fingers trail over the shelves as he passes by. He can hear Harry right up behind him, his heavier steps following Louis’ lighter ones, the smell of the chill in the air outside clinging to him. He sticks out, Louis thinks, sticks out in this shop that smells like dust and print and age. 

He grabs _Slaughterhouse-Five_ with a hesitant, reluctant sort of conviction. He doesn’t know Harry very well just yet, just knows his face and his hair and the dimples in his cheek that could tell a thousand stories, probably. He’s sure Harry’s got tonnes of stories hidden in the crook of his smile, the laugh-lines by his eyes. “Try this one,” Louis says.

“Have you read it?” Harry asks.

“Yes, so you’ve got no excuse to keep your opinion of it from me this time.”

Harry nods. Too trustworthy, Louis thinks again. “Let’s go ring me up then.”

Louis curls his toes into the floor. Harry’s putting his coat back on, buttoning and wrapping himself back up again to brace the cold once more. “You don’t have to, like.You don’t have to buy it,” Louis says. “s’long as you bring it back.”

“Sounds like a library,” says Harry. 

He’s teasing. His eyes are squinted up and he’s cradling the book Louis’s given him and he’s teasing.

“Have you quite finished?” Louis asks him. 

He’s all well-executed charm, Harry is. When he smiles mockingly at Louis and lets the rusted bell over the door chime on his way out. He makes Louis feel like he’s given something away without his permission.

It’s not until later that Louis sees the note left on one of those old, run-down chairs.

 _Harry’s chair_ , it says.

Louis blinks. It doesn’t take a lot of thought before he’s throwing the note away, crumpling it up and shoving it in one of the trash bins. He throws it away without a thought, but he doesn’t forget the words ‘til hours later, after he’s fallen asleep in his chair again. Another book forgotten and dropped next to him.

\----- 

Louis doesn’t clean up the flat any time soon. He doesn’t sleep often, but he reads a tonne, flips through hundred of pages until his eyes feel gritty and dry and his back aches, bent as it is in his chair. 

He doesn’t sit in the rickety old wooden chairs, because one of them has been claimed, and it feels wrong to sit in its counterpart. 

Louis makes a mess of the sugar each morning. He doesn’t clean it up very well, but he moves the cream to a more visible spot, so he won’t forget it.

\-----

Louis watches Harry flit through his shop. He’s got heavy steps in his boots, and the days when he forgets to take them off at the door, he trails snow or rain through the aisles between the shelves.

The shop still hasn’t greeted him, and Louis wonders about that, wonders if Harry doesn’t belong here and wonders why he keeps coming back. He’s too young, is the thing, got youth flushed bright in his cheeks and the easy intelligence behind his green eyes.

Harry’s a character and Louis’ got a bookshop full of worlds, maybe that’s how they relate to each other. 

Louis curls up in his chair. It’s been a busy morning, more customers than usual, and he’d lost track of Harry in it all. Harry’s big and tall and broad but he manages to take up the smallest amount of space, manages to lose himself between corners and edges and stacks of books so that Louis finds himself looking for a crooked, dimpled smile before he realizes and stops himself. But it’s just the two of them now; Louis is balancing a plate of toast on one knee and his mug on the arm of the chair. He’s got a book resting on his thighs, and it’s all quite precarious, but Harry keeps watching him like he’s waiting for something to fall, and Louis has never known how to back down from a challenge. 

“Have you figured out a favorite yet?” Harry calls out. He’s somewhere near the back, the words slow and heavy and drifting towards Louis just the same. “You must have.”

“I haven’t,” Louis replies. It’s distracted and quiet, because he’s almost at the end of _Catcher in the Rye_ and he won’t be able to settle the heavy sort of feeling in his stomach until he finishes. It’s a bundle of nerves and anxiety and anticipation all huddled together and waiting for the book’s end. It’s a familiar sort of feeling, but it hits him hard all the same, makes his shoulders hunch up and his fingers tap restless against the arm of his chair. “I won’t.”

Harry sighs. It’s too quiet to carry, really, but Louis is listening hard enough for it. “You will,” he says decisively. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Louis ignores him. It’s quite easy, really, because Harry demands attention but doesn’t push when Louis won’t give it to him. Harry’s too easy, maybe that’s his flaw too. 

“Louis,” he hears. “Are you ignoring me?” and Louis listens for Harry’s huff, the petulant sound he makes when he’s not getting enough attention.

He leaves Louis be eventually, like he knows to do. Louis only hears the stomp of his boots, the whisper of the pages he’s flipping through because he won’t stop picking up books, is the thing. He’s constantly reading through the inked words, too fast and too inattentive to be getting anything out of it. He does it to make Louis barmy, obviously. 

It’s a good half hour later before he pops up again. He leans his face over the back of Louis’ chair and looms over him. “Have you died, then?”

“Yes,” Louis mumbles. He’s got his head buried in the cushion of the chair and he’s trying wrap his mind around the end of his book. “He was in psychotherapy,” Louis mutters. “The whole time and I never realized.”

“Oh, were you reading _Catcher in the Rye_?” Harry asks. “I love that one.”

Louis frowns, and Harry pokes at it. “Don’t do that, I’ve got a present planned for you.”

“You always have presents,” Louis says. “Is that how you win people over?”

“Is it working?”

“No.”

“Well then, _no_ ,” Harry tells him. “It’s more of a donation, actually. You don’t have one of my favorite books so ’m going to give you my copy.”

Louis blinks. Harry’s a weird sort. Louis hasn’t given away a book in his entire life. They’re his things, really, his possessions. He’s loved them and their pages and their worlds and he won’t turn them over for someone else to ruin. “Why would you do that?”

“So you’ll read it,” Harry says. “And it can, like, live with you, for a bit. With all the other books. Right?”

Louis loves additions to his collection, but he won’t tell Harry that. “Which book have I been missing?”

“It’s a surprise,” Harry says. “I’ll bring it for you the next time I come ‘round.”

He leaves Louis there, all bright eyes and this stupid sort of hopeful tilt to his lips. He stops at the door on his way out, the bell cutting off when the door doesn’t shut right behind him. “I’ve put my name on my chair again,” he says. “Stop taking it off or ’m gonna frown at you a lot.”

Louis sighs, and Harry smiles at him. He uses too much teeth, like he’s trying too hard but not enough at the same time. Maybe that’s his flaw, Louis thinks. Maybe Harry’s just stupid.

Louis lets the note stick to the chair for a few hours. It mocks him a bit, sticks out like a sore thumb and makes Louis anxious. He rips it off, eventually, but he doesn’t crumple it up. He lets it fall into the bin and doesn’t feel bad about it, because he doesn’t do that.

He doesn’t sit in the chair though, is the thing he notices. It just doesn’t feel right, since it’s already been claimed, despite the fact that Louis has thrown all the notes away. The ones that say _Harry’s chair_ with dotted i’s and smileys. 

Harry has claimed a piece of Louis’ shop, and Louis wonders what he will try to lay claim to next. He wonders why he’s waiting for his shop to claim a piece of Harry, too.

\-----

Nights are the worst, Louis thinks. 

There’s nothing to keep him busy. The shop is closed, locked up and mostly dark, save for the lamp Louis keeps on. He’s long past reading now, his eyes gone dry and glazed and heavy. His chair is sunken in around him, and the books keep Louis company as he waits for sleep. 

It’s the nights that get to him. It’s too quiet, even down here. It’s much too still and despite the months that have gone by, Louis’ body is still tensed to hear Zayn’s footsteps in the middle of the night, to smell the smoke settling into the fibers of his jacket, strong and stale and distinct. He’d gotten used to the noise, is all. Of the knowledge that another person was inhabiting this space with him, filling it up with their own stories and books and thoughts.

Not even the ceiling is dripping, and Louis blinks his eyes open, giving up on the pretense of giving in to his exhaustion. 

His bones ache. His neck and his shoulders and his back. He’d like to sleep properly for once, maybe. Like to curl up in his bed instead of his chair and just close his eyes and fucking _sleep_.

He barely hears the knock against the door. He would have missed it had he been anywhere else. As it is, he untangles his limbs from the blanket and unfolds himself from his chair, wincing at the creak his bones give and the crack of his ankles. 

Harry looks different at night. Without his fancy coats and jumpers and collars, he looks like any other boy. Could pass for any other fragile, sleepy boy on the street. He shrugs when Louis opens the door, his face sheepish and etched with tired lines. He slips by Louis with a grateful touch at his waist and Louis leans into it, exhausted enough to let it happen.

“What are you doing here?” 

Harry’s brought the cold in, as usual. Louis curls his toes into the wood floor and shivers, pulls the blanket a little tighter around his shoulders and waits.

“Couldn’t sleep, you know?” Harry says. He fits in now, in the dim, dull light of the shop. Not as larger than life as he seems under the daylight and too stitched together sitting in Louis’ broken down chairs. “I didn’t know if you would be up.”

He’s holding two travel mugs, his gloved fingers wrapped tight around them. Louis watches the steam billow up and takes in the bruised bags under Harry’s eyes and the way the bottoms of his trackies trail on the floor. “What if I’d been asleep?”

“Then I would have gone back home, Louis. I don’t know.” He huffs and hands Louis a mug. “I’ve brought you tea from mine. It’s my flatmate’s favorite.”

Louis lets the tea warm him up. It’s a bit more herbal than he likes, but it’s good, and Harry’s watching him as if Louis’ reaction to it actually matters. He’s a stupid, vulnerable boy, really, huddled up in Louis’ shop in the middle of the night. “Thank you,” Louis says. “Couldn’t really sleep either,” he offers.

Harry moves quiet through the shop. He’s tall and he’s gangly but he makes himself as small as possible, crumpling up his long limbs on the counter and watching Louis clean up the last of his mess and turn off the lamp. 

“What are you doing?” he murmurs, voice quiet in the near darkness.

Louis squints to find him in the dark. He’s warm, from his gloves and the tea, probably. They are two boys awake at the wrong hour and Louis thinks Harry looks good like this. Looks like he belongs here when he’s not all buttoned up and scholarly. When he’s rumpled from sleep and he’s got one of his fuzzy hoodies on and he brings Louis tea for once, like he’s got something to prove.

“I want to show you something,” Louis tells him.

Harry follows easy.

Louis leads him up the steps to the flat. Harry skips the panels Louis tells him to, all wide-eyed trust and easy commitment. They go through Louis’ flat quickly, Louis guiding Harry through the living room and the kitchen, up to the extra set of stairs that lead to the roof.

He doubles back and grabs another blanket, shoves it at Harry and waits for him to wrap himself up. 

Louis hasn’t been up to the roof in ages. It had mostly been Zayn’s thing, looking out at the rooftops and the skyline and smoking through a pack or two. There are remnants of him up here, dirty cigarette butts and an old hoodie. Louis leads Harry to the railing, leans out and stares at London in the middle of the night.

“I used to come up here sometimes,” Louis says, “when I couldn’t sleep, you know? It’s, like, quiet up here. But not quiet enough to make my skin crawl.”

Harry sidles up close, fingers gripping at the edges of the blanket and peering over the railing. The lights reflect off the softness of his face. 

He reads like a book Louis hasn’t read before. There are untold stories in the reflection of his green eyes, in the curls that peek from under his beanie, the bow of his pink lips.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I get it.”

They watch the blinking lights. The streets below are empty. It’s the middle of the night and Louis is shivering in his jumper and a blanket. There’s the slightest touch of warmth from the boy next to him and Louis lets himself feel it. Harry fits up here, in the quiet of the night. Louis would let him claim something when he looks like this, maybe. When he’s sleepy and soft and he’s not looking to get a reaction out of Louis. 

“Thanks,” Harry says. “For bringing me up here. I’ve been trying to get your attention for weeks, you know.”

Louis shrugs. He’s not really sure what Harry’s been doing, taking things from Louis’ shop and calling them his own. He’s a thief, maybe, maybe that’s his flaw. He takes things that don’t belong to him, or maybe Louis just lets him. “What do you want from me?”

Harry pulls the blanket up and Louis feels the edges of his shiver. It’s freezing up here, their breaths puffing out and getting lost in the wind and the blackness. “Whatever I can take,” Harry says. “Whatever you’ll give me.”

Louis keeps his eyes on the roofs, on the roads below, on the streetlamps that leave them half-shadowed. “The only thing I have is my shop,” he says. It’s quiet, too confessional and it settles heavy between them.

“I like your shop,” Harry tells him. 

The stars are out overhead. Louis tilts his head back to watch them. The sky is black and the stars are bright and Harry does the same, both of them staring up at their own little universe.

\-----

They don’t sleep. Harry leaves just before sunrise, his eyes red from being up all night and his face slack with sleeplessness. He leaves his mug on Louis’ kitchen counter by accident, and Louis sets it in the sink for washing. 

He tries reading, but his blood’s pumping too fast and his body’s set in anticipation for the sunrise. Louis watches from the window, watches the orange and pink and yellow all bleed together across the sky. It spurs him into awakeness, so he gives in and lumbers down the steps, mindful of the creaks and loose steps. 

The shop is still asleep, it seems, the wood quiet and the walls echo when Louis knocks against them. So he sweeps up quiet. Wipes down the counters and the windows and straightens up the shelves until the books and the characters are awake too, waiting to share their stories and their worlds and the dedicated and loyal ink on their pages.

There’s another note on one of the chairs. Stuck to the old wood.

 _Harry’s chair_ it says. Louis throws that one away too, but he thinks _not yet_. Not yet, but eventually, maybe.

\-----

Zayn meets him in the sandwich shop down the road. He’s dressed down, like Louis remembers him looking years ago. It’s been awhile since he’s seen Zayn without his hair slicked up, without him hiding under his leather and a haze of smoke.

He’s got a button-up on, some baggy, plaid thing that swallows him up and makes him look small. His hair’s soft and laid flat across his forehead, makes his eyes looks shadowed and big and he looks young, younger than either of them have felt in a long time, probably. He reaches for the cigarette tucked behind his ear and fiddles with it, full up on nervous energy and bad habits.

“Why are we here?” Louis asks. The place Zayn’s picked is small, quiet and cozy and it smells like fresh bread, like dough and butter and heat. “You could’ve made something at mine.”

Zayn laughs, quiet and not quite like Louis remembers, but they’ll get there. “When’s the last time you left that shop, Lou?” Zayn asks. “I think you’ve got ink imprinted in your skin now,” he says. 

Louis shrugs. The shop is home. The shop is safe and quiet and consistent and Louis leaves when he needs to. He does miss going out with Zayn though, misses the thumping beat of music from the clubs and the swirl of smoke and alcohol and the warmth in his chest from being in the middle of so many warm bodies, all looking to have a good time for the night. 

“We should go out soon,” he says. 

Zayn looks taken aback at first, a bit shocked and a bit pleased, like he can’t choose one to settle on. “Yeah, Lou,” he manages. “Like old times?”

Old times consist of Louis and Zayn grinding slow and close in a seedy club somewhere. Sweat clinging to their foreheads and the dips of their spines, Zayn’s hands wrapped tight against Louis’ waist and both of them loose-tongued and glassy-eyed. Old times are the liquor on Zayn’s tongue, both of them stumbling up the steps to the flat, clothes flung off on the floor and the sofa and the backs of chairs. Waking up to eggs and pancakes in the morning, Zayn’s lips already curled around his morning cigarette when Louis shuffles into the kitchen.

Louis blinks.

“Something like that,” he says. Because their history is tangled up and tied together and Louis is determined to straighten it all out. Because they’d almost fucked it up once and Louis won’t do it again. “But, like, it’ll be different, you know?”

Zayn hums, thoughtful. “Still us though, right?”

“Still us,” Louis promises. “Always been me and you, Zayn.”

Zayn nudges him with his foot. They’re little out of place in here, a little too uneven and sewn together not just right. But Zayn nudges Louis with his boot and rolls his eyes a little and Louis knows they’ll be fine, eventually. 

They eat and they people-watch. Louis has a habit of talking too loud and Zayn laughs at him regardless, his eyes all crinkled up and his cigarette tucked back behind his ear, untouched. Zayn leans back in his seat and tells Louis about the places he’s been in the past few months, the cities he’d spent searching through, looking for something more and something better and it had been here all along, apparently. 

“I had to sing for them,” Zayn says. “Nervous as shit, right?” He shrugs. “I thought I’d blown it but they called me up like two days later and told me I had the gig.”

“Proper excited for you,” Louis tells him. “Is that what all this is about, then? Finally got a date for the first show?”

Zayn slides a flyer across the counter. “It’s all there. I’ve got, like, actual promo now. I’m not sure how to handle that.”

“Well done, Malik,” Louis says. “Will I even be able to get in or should I settle for listening to you croon from outside the door?”

“Don’t even joke,” Zayn says. He’s fiddling with his cigarette again, hands fumbling around the tip and he pats his trousers absently for his lighter. “You have to be there. I’ll make a total cock of myself otherwise, you know.”

It’s ridiculous, the fragile way Zayn looks at him, like there’s a chance Louis won’t show up. “I’ll be there,” he says. “Of course I’ll be there.”

\-----

Zayn walks Louis back to the bookshop. He smells like smoke and bread and soap when he leans in and wraps his arms around Louis. Louis breathes in and holds the scent tight, lets it wrap around the spaces in between his bones and settle before they both pull away.

\-----

It’s raining when Harry asks about the flyer hanging on the window of Louis’ shop.

They’d been up on the roof for a bit. Louis has still got his wellies on and Harry’s boots are wet, drying out by the door. Louis’s closed up for lunch, so it’s just the two of them, shivering a bit and shaking water from their hair. 

Louis is up on the table, fiddling with the thermostat and trying to get the heat to work. Harry would be better up here, got longer legs and longer limbs in general, but he’s too busy roaming ‘round the the shop, intermittently calling out titles of books and asking if they happen to be Louis’ favorite one. 

“Louis,” Harry says, and Louis sighs, craning his head around from where he’s trying to set the temperature. 

“I don’t _have_ a favorite,” he replies. “And even if I did I wouldn’t say just to spite you, obviously.”

“No, that’s not.” Louis hears Harry’s heavy footsteps coming up behind him. He turns and sees Harry looking up at him, all furrowed eyebrows and damp, wet curls. “Would you really not tell me?”

Louis shuts the door to the thermostat and bends at his knees to balance himself on the table. 

“I’d tell you,” he says. “I can’t imagine how cross you’d be if I didn’t.”

Harry lets out a pleased little hum, and Louis settles down on his haunches. Harry’s picked up a habit of touching Louis now, nothing pressing or serious. But a hand on his thigh, like now, the swipe of his fingers over Louis’ shoulder or pushing at the pulse beating just underneath the skin of his neck. Louis leans into it, because Harry’s hands are warm and big and Louis’ jumper is still damp from the cold and the rain.

Louis isn’t sure what’s giving and what’s taking anymore. 

“What were you going to ask about then?” he murmurs. “If not my favorite book?”

Harry holds up the flyer that Louis’ had taped up to the window. It’s got a picture of Zayn on it, brooding and intense and Louis smiles at it. The absurdity of it all happening. “Someone you know?” Harry asks. 

“Yeah,” Louis says. “Zayn’s my. He’s my best mate. Got his first big gig next week.”

The thing about Harry is that he’s earnest as anything, grinning over at Louis like he’s proud of Zayn too, even though Louis’s made sure to never mention him. “That’s amazing, Louis. Seriously. You must be really proud of him.”

Louis feels the pride ballooning up in his chest, burst out into his lungs and his chest until it feels like he can’t breathe with it. “Yeah, I’m. Yeah, he’s worked really hard for it. He, like, proper deserves it, you know?”

Harry nods. He runs his fingers over the font lettering on the page, same as Louis has done plenty of times. “That’s. I can tell, you know. In your face.” Harry smiles up at him, bit of a flush on his cheeks from the cold maybe. Maybe something else. Louis watches it spread across his face with the slightest bit of fascination. “It’s showing on your face, I guess. Usually I have to search, you know. To figure you out.”

Louis rolls his eyes. Harry’s hand moves up to his jaw, thumbs over the bump behind Louis’ ear and where his hair curls a bit behind there. “I’m not nearly as complicated as you think I am,” he says. 

“Yes, you are,” Harry tells him. “Maybe more, I haven’t decided yet.”

Louis huffs out something like a laugh, breathless a bit. Like he feels in the middle of a book, where the plot could go one of two ways and Louis’ stomach drops in anticipation. “D’ya want to, like. I don’t know.” He gestures to the flyer in Harry’s hand, the gentle way his fingers grip the edge like he knows that it’s important. “You should come with me,” Louis says. “If you want.”

Harry looks earnest but he’s a conniving little thing, edges of a smirk curled into his cheeks. “Like a date?” he asks. “Is that what you’re doing?”

“Christ.” Louis breathes out, huffy. He stretches his legs out, jumping down off the table and landing on his heels. “It’s not. Like. You’re a bit of a shit, Harry, you know that?”

Harry laughs, throws his head back so his whole neck shows, milky white and unmarked. “I know,” he says. “Are you going to say it’s a date now?”

“Never,” Louis says, but he makes Harry an extra cup of tea so he stops pouting. He gives him more sugar than he needs and doesn’t kick Harry out after closing, even though he’s full of energy and nearly vibrating with it, wide green eyes and a wider, more distracting smile.

\-----

The shop still hasn’t greeted Harry but the roof knows him. His boots stomp heavy and familiar over to the railing, his curls blowing in face as he bends over and looks down at London.

“’s incredible, isn’t it,” Harry says. “This view’s incredible, Louis.” 

He’s got his bomber jacket on, the collar curling over his neck and his ears. The wind’s put some color on his cheeks, made his skin a bit pink and and his lips chapped and he leans over the rail and stares down at the streets, at the people passing by. 

He’s a book Louis’ never read. A book with too many words and too many pages and it will take Louis ages to get through, probably. 

“Yeah,” Louis murmurs. “The view’s incredible.”

Harry grins. Teeth and dimples. “’s totally a date, you know.”

He leaves another note, _Harry’s chair_ , it says. Louis takes it off, but he sticks it behind the counter, this time. For safekeeping until the shop’s ready.

\-----

The club Zayn’s playing at isn’t that big, but it’s already packed by the time Louis and Harry arrive.

Louis feels nerves deep in his belly, this anxious butterfly type feeling that leaves him light-headed and trembling, a little. There’s a line by the door, already halfway around the block, and Louis wonders how all these people have heard of Zayn, how many people are here simply through word of mouth.

Harry sticks close next to him, when Louis tells the guy at the door his name, when they’re let in with ease but have to push through the warm, tipsy bodies in the club, Harry’s fingers clinging to the back of Louis’ jacket. It’s hot inside, and Louis feels his hair sticking to the back of his neck within minutes, feels the heat rising up on his face and the low valley of his back.

“Big crowd,” Harry murmurs, lips close to Louis’ ears and body pressed up even closer. There’s not much room in here, and they’re pushing it time-wise, squeezing in just as the lights start to dim and there’s a guy on the stage introducing Zayn. “D’ya think he’s nervous?”

Louis watches the stage close, his eyes following the dimmed figure that slinks out from the side, all leather and gel, even from where they’re standing. “Don’t think he has much to be nervous about,” Louis says, eyes on Zayn as he drops on his stool, knees bent up and head pushed close to the mic.

The music starts and Louis recognizes some of it from months before. When Zayn was piecing together songs and beats, humming little melodies as he made breakfast, both of them tired and hungover and sleepy in the bright light of the kitchen. Louis remembers bits and pieces of this, cut off snippets of Zayn’s voice, catching on a word or a certain beat that stuck with him.

He’s in his element here, is the thing. With his eyes closed and the mic in front of him, his voice sounds smooth like honey. Confident and melodic and Louis remembers it intimately, remembers Zayn singing in the shower and in the kitchen and getting dressed in the morning, voice raspy and heavy with sleep.

And now he’s _here_ , on stage in a hot, packed club, singing to a full crowd of swaying, enthralled bodies, singing to them, singing to Louis. 

Singing to Harry, who’s got his hands tight over Louis’ belly, both of them moving in time to the song, trapped between people enjoying Zayn’s music, enjoying _Zayn_.

It’s a lot to take in. The thumping beat behind Zayn’s voice, the heat of the club, the feel of Harry’s body swaying behind him, sturdy and strong and broad. Louis leans back into it, leans his head back to rest on Harry’s shoulder and lets Harry’s fingers hold tight to him. He’s a constant and steady pressure, not pushing for anything more, but Louis leans into him anyway, gives him this. Or lets him take it.

It’s hot in here and Louis feels flushed and languid and Harry’s grip is firm, and Louis still doesn’t know who’s giving and taking now. If there is a difference between the two of them, Harry and Louis, here. 

Zayn stands up at one point, all sharp-angled, dangerous grace on his skinny legs. He’s got his customary cigarette tucked behind his gelled strands, and it’s probably not noticeable but Louis can see his hands shaking around the mic, the fingers gripping tight enough to hurt, probably. He saunters to the end of the stage, voice like a powerhouse, head thrown back around the notes he lets loose.

Louis lets the sound of it wash over him. Lets Harry’s fingers press against him and feels the solid chest at his back, feels the curls tickling his face when Harry leans in and says, “He sounds fucking amazing, Lou,” and Louis shivers from the voice vibrating against his ear, shivers from the awed atmosphere of the club and how Zayn sounds fucking incredible, standing up there where he belongs.

It’s a lot to take in, is the thing, and Louis feels heated from it, hazy and breathless with the feeling. Feels something heavy and constant in his gut, like pride and excitement and anxiety and something new. Like Harry’s cologne, like the whistling in the crowd for Zayn, like the warm bodies next to him, behind him, like the wideness of Louis’ grin when Zayn smiles out at the crowd, uncertain, and Louis’ voice nearly goes hoarse with how hard he cheers along with the the rest of the people jammed in tight. 

There’s a break in the crowd after Zayn’s set, a sudden rush for the booths and the bar and the loos. Louis watches Zayn slip off stage, looking flushed and deflated because he’s just given his all on that stage. 

“He was incredible, right?” Louis asks. His throat feels dry and he’s proud as anything and Harry’s still pressed up close to him, and Louis can’t _think_. 

He feels Harry nod, feels the heat of his breath against Louis’ neck when he speaks. “Yeah,” Harry says. “He was incredible.”

Louis sees the top of Zayn’s head coming over from the bar. He’s got a drink in his hand, a loose, happy smile on his face. His quiff’s proper fallen now, hanging down in his eyes, and he pushes past people to get to Louis, throws his arms around him and holds on tight.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he murmurs. “I can’t believe that just happened.”

Louis laughs, his arm reaching around Zayn’s torso and burying his face in Zayn’s neck. He’s still got a hand entangled with Harry’s somewhere, the crowd pushing at them from all sides. “Believe it, babe. You’re a proper superstar.”

Zayn pulls back. He’s got that smile on, the one that Louis hasn’t seen in ages, the one that makes his eyes crinkle up. It still makes Louis swallow hard at the sight of it, really. “I’m so fucking glad you’re here,” Zayn says. “Fuck, Lou, I couldn’t have done this if you weren’t.”

“You could have,” Louis tells him. Zayn’s skin feels heated and he’s still breathing a bit hard and his hands tremble where they’re clinging to Louis. “You were amazing up there. I had nothing to do with that, you idiot.”

Zayn shakes his head. His eyes are wide and his hair’s matted to his forehead a bit, stuck to his skin. He’s still smiling, this wide, expansive thing that Louis knows he’s reflecting. “ _Fuck_ , is this really happening?”

Louis laughs, only it’s drowned out by the music coming through the speakers, by the blood rushing too fast under his skin and the buzzing in his head from where he’s attached to Zayn with one hand and to Harry with the other. It’s swallowed up by Zayn when he leans in, still smiling, wide-eyed and exuberant, his fingers digging in to Louis’ shoulder, his mouth slick when he kisses Louis.

“Love you,” he murmurs. “Thank you for being here, _fuck_ , I love you.” 

Louis leans in for a bit, because Zayn’s smiling so fucking wide and Louis knows how hard he’s worked for this, knows how long he’s spent trying to get there and now he _is_ and Louis loves him too, always will.

He pulls back eventually, and they’re both laughing. Zayn’s fingers are digging in so hard Louis might have bruises tomorrow, probably. Louis rests his head on Zayn’s bony shoulder and breathes in and

“Louis?”

he pulls back, jerky. The grip on his hand loosens, and Louis turns around. Harry swallows hard under Louis’ gaze, his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth turned down.

“Who’s this then?” Zayn asks, peering over Louis’ shoulder. “Did you bring a friend, Lou?”

Louis tightens his grip on Harry’s hand, taking in the inquisitive tilt of Zayn’s head, the slight narrowing of his eyes when they drop down to their hands. 

“Or not a friend,” he says. “You didn’t say anything.”

Louis locks his jaw and breathes in. The club is too loud and Harry’s just behind him, too quiet and trying to pull his hand away. Zayn’s in front of him, holding onto Louis too tight.

“This is Harry,” Louis says. “Harry, this is Zayn.”

“Harry,” Zayn answers, flat. “Hey, mate, you think you could get Louis a drink. He looks a bit thirsty, doesn’t he?”

“Zayn.”

“What? Is he not old enough to buy alcohol?”

“ _Zayn_.”

“s’alright,” Harry says. He pulls away from Louis entirely, his shoulders hunched up and his curls falling in his eyes. “I’ll get you something to drink.”

They both watch him walk away, and Zayn grabs onto Louis’ wrist, pulls him into one of the booths by the door and pins him in.

“So,” he says. “Harry.”

Zayn is a book Louis’s read through before, a book he knows line by line but would still read again. He’d skip through some of the chapters this time though, the chapters he’s not allowed to read anymore, and he’s okay with that.

“No,” Louis tells him. “You don’t get to do that.” He steals a drink from the bottle Zayn’s set on the table, just to do something with his hands. “You don’t get to _do_ that, Zayn.”

Zayn turns so he’s not facing Louis anymore, instead looking out at the stage and the crowd. “You didn’t say anything. You never told me you were seeing someone.”

“I’m not,” Louis tells him. “We’re not. Not really anything right now. Not yet.” Louis blows out a heavy breath and rubs a hand through his hair, pushes it back from his face. “Probably not ever, now. But, would it even matter if I was? Does it matter?”

Zayn slumps in the booth, his head tilted against the back of it and his eyes closed. “No,” he says. “It doesn’t matter, I know that, okay? Just. You brought him to my first show.”

“Was I not allowed to do that?”

Zayn frowns, cutting his eyes over at Louis. “Shut up. I know I’m being stupid but shut up. You could have told me. You _should_ have told me.”

Louis shrugs. He’s tired, all of a sudden, his head pounding a bit and his shoulders going heavy. “I don’t owe you anything anymore, Zayn.”

“You’re my _best friend_ , Louis, for fuck’s sake.” Zayn finishes off his drink, slams it down harder than he should and glares at it. “So, like, you don’t owe me anything since I’m not fucking you anymore, is that it? I’m not earning it if I’m not making you come?”

Harry comes back and sets a drink down on the table then, his eyes wide and his mouth set in a flat line. “Didn’t know what you wanted.”

Louis stares hard at the table, at Harry’s fingers clenched white around the glass. “Thanks, Harry,” he manages, and it’s not enough, obviously, to smooth the lines by Harry’s mouth, the little furrow between his eyebrows. “I--”

“Cheers, mate,” Zayn says, pulling the drink from Harry’s grip and knocking it back. “Bartender give you any shit about your age?”

“I think ‘m gonna head home,” Harry says. He doesn’t rise to it, doesn’t look at either of them. “It was nice meeting you, Zayn. I’ll. I’ll see you around, Louis, okay?”

He gives Louis this awful smile when he leaves. That’s really the only way Louis can describe it. It’s ugly and awful and it turns up the wrong way and Louis hates it. Harry’s a book Louis has never read but he knows that smile doesn’t belong in Harry’s story, he knows that. 

“Harry, wait,” Louis calls, already scrambling up and trying to climb over Zayn.

“You’re leaving?” Zayn asks him. There’s disbelief on his face, hurt behind his eyes that Louis doesn’t know how to fix right now.

Louis jumps over him, landing funny on his ankle and trying not to react to Zayn reaching out to catch him, even now. “I’ve got to at least talk to him.” Louis says. “Fuck, Zayn, don’t let me mess this up, alright?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer. Louis grabs his jacket from coat check and stumbles out the door, out into the cold. Harry hasn’t gotten far, just down the block a bit, and Louis yells out to him, his feet shuffling a bit as he moves to catch up.

Harry doesn’t look at him, and it drives Louis crazy, makes him feel so fucking stupid for taking it for granted. “Harry.”

“s’ okay, Louis,” Harry says. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.” He shrugs, the movement half hidden under his heavy winter coat. “I’m not really anything to you anyway, am I?”

Louis breathes out, watches his breath fade into the chilled air and disappear. “Come back to the shop with me, okay? I’ll make tea and you can warm up a bit before you head home.”

Harry doesn’t answer, his eyes still avoiding Louis, eyes on everything else and Louis hates that. 

“ _Harry_. Just come back with me, okay?”

Louis watches his shoulders slump, a bit of defeat and frustration rolled up in one. He doesn’t say anything, but he nods, gestures at Louis to start walking, so Louis does.

Harry follows and Louis is acutely aware of the space between them, the space he hadn’t realized Harry had filled before, with his hair and his eyes and his smiles and the stories hiding underneath his skin.

\-----

The bell over the door chimes too loud when Louis unlocks the shop. The drip from the ceiling is steady, and Louis grabs the bucket from behind the counter and sets it on the floor. “Need to get that fixed,” he mutters, and Harry doesn’t answer and Louis sighs.

He clears his throat and shrugs a shoulder towards the stairs. “We can go upstairs and I’ll make tea?”

Harry still doesn’t answer and Louis turns away, footsteps loud and heavy and echoing as he walks to the stairs. 

“Louis,” Harry says, finally. Finally.

“Yeah?”

Harry’s hunched in on himself, arms crossed and his head down. He stands small and unsure in the middle of Louis’ shop, like he doesn’t belong there. “You don’t, like. You don’t have to explain it all to me, okay? I just. I need to know the truth so I know what I’m doing here.” He looks up then, stares right at Louis and doesn’t back away. “I need to know what I’m doing here.”

“Harry.”

“You told me, Louis. You said you only had your shop. You told me that.”

“I meant that,” Louis tells him. “That’s all I have. I don’t, like, that’s all I have.”

Harry shakes his hair out of his eyes. He’s still got his gloves on, still got his boots on like he’s a moment away from leaving out. “Do you have Zayn?” he asks. 

“No.” Louis sags against the wall. “I used to? I don’t anymore, I haven’t for a long time.” He shrugs, tired and worn down. “What happened tonight won’t happen again. We don’t. That’s not who we are anymore. It’s just me, Harry. Me and my bookshop, that’s all there is.”

“Does Zayn have _you_?”

Louis curls his hands into fists, his nails digging into his palms where Harry can’t see. It seems like such a private thing, talking about this, something Louis wants to keep hidden in the space in his chest where he doesn’t have to talk about it. Harry’s justified though, Louis knows that, knows that somewhere deep where logic reaches, but right here it just feels like he’s exposing himself. Making himself too vulnerable.

“ _No_ ,” he forces out. “How many ways do I have to say it? It’s me. I’m here, and this is all I have to give you, Harry.”

Harry stares at Louis from across the shop. They’re both holding themselves too quiet, too closed off, and Louis doesn’t know when that started being a problem, being too closed off, but he feels it now. He’s never seen Harry likes this, because all Harry’s emotions play on his face, that’s just who Harry _is_ , but Louis can’t read a thing off him now. 

“I don’t want tea,” Harry says eventually. He drops his arms and shoves his hands in his pockets.

“Okay,” Louis says. He pauses, thinks about what he’s meant to say because this seems important, the two of them standing in the near dark in Louis’ old, worn down bookshop. “What do you want?”

Harry shrugs. He’s a character in a book Louis hasn’t read yet, a book whose pages are unfamiliar to Louis, whose words are new and interesting and delicate, fragile. Like all the other books in Louis’ shop.

“I want creaky floors,” Harry tells him. He moves closer, slow and hesitant, never looking away from Louis now. “I want a thermostat that never, ever works. I want a ceiling that leaks into a bucket.”

“Is that all?” Louis asks him. Harry won’t stop moving now, is the thing. His boots echoing through the stacks of books and towards Louis. 

“No,” Harry says. “I want to find books on the shelves with the bookmarks still in them. Did you know that you do that? You leave the bookmarks in so I know all the books you’ve read in here. I want to keep finding them.”

“And?”

“I want to skip the loose panels on the stairs going up to the roof,” Harry goes on. “I want to stand up there and look down at all the people. I want. I want my chair, Louis. I want everyone to know that the chair belongs to me.”

“Okay,” Louis breathes. “You can have the chair. Is that everything?”

Harry’s right up on him. He smells like cologne and sweat and liquor, like the club. His hair’s wilted, the curls limp against his face and his cheeks tinged pink. He presses a gloved hand against Louis’ neck, rubs the skin there. He takes the other to Louis’ waist and holds on. 

“I want you, obviously,” Harry murmurs. He’s too close, eyes too wide and too green and his lips too red. “I want whatever you’ll give me.”

Louis shuts his eyes. “Yes,” he says. “Okay.”

Harry kisses him. He’s warm and he tastes like ink on a page, like a story already written and unfolding right in Louis’ shop. His hands are big and they spread over Louis’ waist, over some of his stomach and Louis leans into it, tangles his fingers in the soft, flattened curls on Harry’s head and tugs, just to hear him inhale too sharp, just to see. 

Louis pulls back and grins when Harry tries to follow. Their breathing is too loud in here, too fast and too heavy, but Harry’s laughter covers it up. Teeth and dimples, all Harry.

“It was totally a date,” he says.

Louis drops his head on Harry’s shoulder, breathing in the warmth and the faint scent of his cologne. “It totally was,” he admits. 

Louis watches Harry write another note, the letters big and obnoxious.

 _Harry’s chair_ , it says. 

Louis keeps it there.

\-----

They end up sleeping on Louis’ sofa. 

It’s not very comfortable. The thing’s a bit too tiny and the cushions are hard and Louis’s probably too heavy on Harry, their limbs tangled up in sleep.

It’s just.

It feels wrong to have Harry in the bed. The bed represents something different, something Louis doesn’t have anymore. The bed represents a story that’s already ended, a story that Louis has already read. He barely sleeps in it himself, the mattress uncomfortable and the sheets stale with smoke. 

They sleep on the sofa, and Louis wakes up with a crick in his neck. He wakes up with his arm numb from where it’s been tucked under Harry all night and his eyes gritty and still sleep-heavy. Louis wakes up pressed up against Harry’s broad chest, and it’s like something he read once, the novelty of this feeling. Of gritty eyes and full hearts and anxiety fluttering low in his belly because of the unknown.

The sun slits through his blinds, narrow but still bright, shining into his eyes and forcing him into being fully awake. He moves slowly, untangling himself from Harry, groggy and still tired and staring down at a _boy_ , a stupid little boy who forced his way into Louis’ shop. Harry is a boy, Louis thinks, looks like one too, his pink mouth turned down in sleep and his curls wild and mussed around his head. Louis would push them away from his face, if Louis were a different character in a different story. But he’s just Louis here, so he reaches down and pulls a few curls into Harry’s eyes, just because.

He doesn’t have much time before he has to open the shop, so Louis pads into the kitchen and starts the kettle, same as always. It whistles loud, like it usually does, but Louis usually doesn’t have a sleeping boy on his sofa, a sleeping boy with gangly limbs and stories tucked into the creases of his skin, probably. So he peeks his head in, just to see, and Harry’s still asleep.

Tea made, bitter for Louis. No sugar, no milk, no cream.

He leaves another mug on the counter. Moves the sugar container next to it. Three packets of cream. 

The steps creak under his bare feet. The wood floor’s cold, and Louis huddles in his jumper, the sleeves falling down past his fingers and warming him up. His tea is hot though, the mug near burning the palms of his hands as he turns on the shop lights and waits for the store to wake up. It’ll be a bit though, Louis has learned, because the books are old and the shop is older, and both need time to come to life in the mornings.

He cleans while he waits. Sweeps the floor and dusts off the counters and shelves and wipes down the chairs. He fluffs up the cushions and folds the blankets on his chair, and wipes down the two rickety ones. One unclaimed and one Harry’s now, maybe. Probably. Definitely, according to the note stuck to it. The one Louis doesn’t throw away, even in the morning light. 

The ceiling starts to drip soon. Not heavy or constant, but enough for Louis to notice. The wood creaks under his feet when he walks across the shop, warmed a bit now and ready to be trampled on. The shelves are clean and the books smell like paper and ink and adventure and Louis unlocks the front door and opens the shop.

It’s not until an hour or two later that Harry wakes up. Louis is sat on the stool behind the counter when he hears the creak on the stairs. He sees Harry’s feet first, just as spindly and gangly as the rest of him, his toes curling around the edges of the step. He peers his head out and checks that the shop is empty before he leans against the wall and smiles at Louis, sleepy. Just the way they describe in the books, the edges of his grin curling up slow and his eyelids still a bit droopy, heavy. 

Louis smiles back at him. The shop doesn’t greet him, not yet, but Louis does.

“Hi,” Harry says. 

There’s an edge to Harry’s voice, underneath the tired rasp and the molasses-slow melody of it. Underneath all that Louis hears the hesitance he feels tightening up in his own chest. The nervous fluttering from looking at Harry under the bright shop lights and seeing green eyes staring back at him, and they ask him questions that Louis doesn’t know the answers to.

“Hi,” Louis replies. “You’ve been asleep for ages.”

Harry shrugs. His curls sit limp and tucked back behind his ears and his fingers clutch the mug Louis left for him on the counter. “I could hear you down here,” he says. “Can I, like. Is it still okay if I kiss you?”

Louis huffs out a laugh or something close. His fingers curl around the edge of the counter and he waits for Harry to step closer. “You don’t have to ask, you know. Like. You can just. Kiss me, I suppose.”

“You suppose,” Harry repeats. His steps seem too quiet, and Louis realizes he’s listening for the clanky thumps of Harry’s boots. But he’s barefoot now. Comfortable in Louis’ shop. “Does that mean I have you now?”

Teeth and dimples. Curls and overwhelming charm. They’re both characters and somehow they’ve ended up in the same universe. 

“I guess,” Louis says slowly. “I guess that would mean you have me.”

“And you have me.”

“Do I?” Harry’s got his elbows digging into the counter, leaning into Louis’ space and taking up the rest of it. “Have you, I mean.”

“Obviously.” Harry frowns, thoughtful. “’m pretty sure you’ve had me since you said you didn’t have a favorite book. I have to stick around now just to prove you wrong.”

Maybe that’s Harry’s flaw. He sticks to people for stupid reasons. “What if I pick a favorite book then? Will you leave?”

“This doesn’t feel anything like kissing,” Harry says. “This feels like an interrogation. I’m not in class, Louis.”

“It was just a question.”

“Well, no,” Harry tells him. “I’ll stay for as long as you’ll have me. This still isn’t kissing, you know.”

Harry takes, or Louis gives, or maybe it’s some of both. Either way they’re kissing in the middle of Louis’ shop, two characters from two different universes now residing in one, in here. For now, at least. Louis lets his fingers grip the bones in Harry’s broad shoulder, lets his eyes fall shut and he realizes Harry smells like dust, a bit. Like old ink on old pages lined between old books.

\-----

It’s a Saturday when Louis grows absolutely tired of looking at his flat.

The sheets on the bed are the first to go. He washes them biweekly, takes them to the laundromat and watches the spin cycles with his book resting on his knees, but they still smell like smoke, is the thing. That faded smell of cigarettes and expensive cologne that Louis isn’t sure is actually there or just lingering at the fringes of his conscience, waiting to be let go.

So, the sheets are the first to leave.

He lets them fall in a heap on the floor, pooling around his bare feet. The comforter is next, balled up at the end of the bed. He’s only used one half of it in months, the thing mostly useless, so Louis drags that off too. It’s heavier than he realized, warm and soft and he hates it. Never wants to see it again, really.

The bed looks awfully big and awfully bare like this. Louis stares down at it. He can’t imagine two people ever filling up a bed this big, especially with their bodies all twined together and tangled up underneath the covers. He can’t imagine feeling good in this bed, feeling loved in a bed this size. It should have swallowed him up.

It did swallow him up.

He takes the pillowcases off too, because they hold the scent the tightest, the shampoo embedded in them and they cling to it, they do. Louis lets them fall to the floor and he stares down at a bare mattress and an old bedframe and a bed he hasn’t properly slept on in months. 

The covers can go in the trash, he thinks. 

He leaves the box under his bed untouched. The box full of photographs that Louis has no idea what to do with. He keeps it sealed up tight, like an album of sorts, a picture book with too little words to explain what everything means.

Louis leaves the box. Because it’s important. Because it can be filled up with other things too, eventually. Hopefully. Pictures that mix with his past and make him want to open the box again.

He picks his clothes up off the floor. There are an awful lot of hangers lined up empty in the closet, so Louis gives them something to hold up. Gives them jumpers and trousers and all his skinnies. He stacks his shoeboxes on the shelf, hangs his scarves and beanies on the hooks on the side. It looks like a proper closet when he’s done, a little out of breath and tired but satisfied. It looks like a proper closet of Louis’ things, almost entirely full.

The living room is next. The sun shines on all the dust, highlights how how empty Louis’ flat is, even with him and all his things still in it. He picks up the magazines that don’t belong to him that are scattered across the table. They are the old glamour issues whose covers aren’t very glossy anymore, whose thin, fragile spines are falling apart and bent. 

Not as sturdy as a book, the magazines. They gather dust in Louis’ flat and they fall apart.

There are the cushions on the sofa. Louis drags them off. They’re huge and they take up too much space on the floor. But they’re gone from the sofa now, even if eventually he’ll have to put them back on after he cleans them. He finds the mini vacuum in the bottom of the closet, tucked away behind shoes and coats and scarfs and goes at the sofa with that too, vacuuming out the crumbs and the bits of paper and the change that’s accumulated here over time. Over days and months and years, like pages turning, almost. Chapters gone by.

The kitchen may be the most complicated.

It’s unlike the other rooms. The bedroom was half-lived in, because Louis had relegated himself to a side of the bed. Had assigned himself floor space for his clothes because the closet felt too big on its own, all emptied of band t-shirts and acid jeans and Zayn’s favorite brands. The living room was an ode to the past, of sorts, outdated magazines and old papers shoved under the cushions. It was easy for Louis to throw those things away, because they were meaningless. Trinkets, in a way. Cheap reminders of a book long since shelved.

The kitchen though. If the bedroom has half of something, and the living room an ode, then the kitchen is a shrine. A time capsule of cooked breakfast and late mornings. Of smoke over the stove and the alarm going off too many times. Of dinners made with spices and herbs that Louis’ couldn’t, still can’t, pronounce. The kitchen is a world of its own, sentient in a way, with all its memories. 

Louis wipes the dust off the appliances he’s never really touched. There are more pots and pans than he remembers being stored in the cupboards, so he dumps them in the sink, just to be safe. He hates doing the washing up, and this has never been his job, but Louis does it anyway. He gets arms-deep in dishwater bubbles and turns the water too hot and ends up getting more water on the counters than the sink.

He doesn’t throw away anything in the kitchen. These things were left for him, for someone, to use. And Louis won’t ever touch them, won’t ever cook on them or with them, but he hopes someone will, eventually. Hopes the kitchen will get new memories of breakfast and conversations over the kitchen table. Hopes it will enjoy the late mornings still, even if Louis starts them with someone new (someone young and genuine with dimples etched into his cheeks). Hopes the kitchen will remember him without the haze of smoke invading his lungs, invading the crevices of the flat and settling, heavy and seemingly permanent.

Louis gathers the jackets left hanging in the hall cupboard. They smell familiar, like written lyrics on a page, like the melody of a song. Louis gathers them all up and shoves them in a bag to give back to their owner. He ties it up and sets it by the door so he won’t forget. He can’t forget.

He finds himself back in his bedroom. His books are stacked neatly on the nightstand, his shoes all put away. His clothes hang in the closet, filling up the space in a way he didn’t know they could. The blankets are still piled on the floor, a ball of memories piled at Louis’ feet.

He lies on the bed. He doesn’t push himself to one side, though, clinging to the edge and halfway to bolting back down the stairs to the comfort of his chair and his books and his shop.

Louis lies in the middle. He spreads his limbs out and takes up as much space as he can.

\-----

It takes him a week to get the scent out of the cushions. He thinks there might still be a trace of it, embedded somewhere deep and permanent, but Louis thinks that’s okay. 

\-----

Louis lets a soft-looking boy into his shop late most nights. Harry’s got his bag slung over his shoulder, his blazers and tight skinnies discarded for trackpants and warm, thick jumpers.

His knuckles press lightly against the door, and Louis’s always nearby to answer it. Harry sweeps in with a flurry of cold air and flushed cheeks and pink lips. And Louis can take now, too, or maybe Harry’s giving. Either way Harry is expansive and broad and Louis’ hands read the ridges of his spine like words on a page, press him up against the wall and he read bits of Harry’s story. The coffee on his tongue and the feel of his small waist, hidden under thick layers like a book waiting to be opened.

“Hi,” Harry murmurs. He smiles with too many teeth, cheeky as hell, and his eyes look big and green even in the dim light. Even though only one lamp’s on, Louis feels like he can see all of him up this close. This sleepy, silly boy that keeps coming back to his shop. 

“Hi,” he says. 

They pull back slow. Harry’s mouth chases after Louis when he pulls away, his fingers curled in Louis’ jumper, pulling him back. “Got caught up studying,” he says. “Didn’t realize what time it was.”

“Wasn’t asleep anyway,” Louis tells him. “Are you staying?”

Harry hums. He’s so young, Louis remembers, looking at the wide-eyed sincerity and contentment when Harry says, “If you want me to,” as if Louis would say no. As if Louis’s ever told him no. 

Harry follows Louis up the stairs, easy and routine by now, the simplicity of it all. They skip the second and the fifth and the seventh steps, ingrained for Louis and well-practiced for Harry. Louis heads straight for the kitchen, Harry near on his heels, both of them crammed into Louis’ small little kitchen, filled up with things that aren’t meant for him.

“D’ya want tea?” Louis asks. Harry’s pressed up against his back, chin digging into the sharpness of Louis’ shoulder. He smells like sleep and rain and coffee. 

“Want you,” Harry murmurs.

His curls tickle Louis’ jaw, his fingers pushing up against the hem of Louis’ jumper, hesitant and careful but there nonetheless, stroking the soft skin over Louis’ belly and his sides. His mouth feels warm on the back of Louis’ back, sending shivers through Louis, a bit, sending a message in a way that words can’t. Louis is a book that Harry’s reading with his fingers, thumbing over the words etched into Louis’ skin and asking for more. 

They fall clumsy on the sofa, legs tangled up and Louis’ back arching under Harry’s touch, trying his best to stay balanced on the cushions. “Thought you still had to study,” Louis manages. Harry’s a bit distracting, tonguing at the skin on Louis’ neck, leaving a mark, probably. 

“’m a fast learner,” Harry mutters, and it’s so stupid. He’s so stupid, this silly boy that belongs in a book somewhere. A world in its own distinct universe. “”And you’re my favorite subject anyway.”

Louis chokes out a laugh, his fingers fisted in Harry’s jumper, his body overlaid with a bigger one, a broader one, one warm and comfortably heavy and new. “Oh my god, that was terrible,” Louis tells him. “Absolutely awful.”

“s’not funny,” Harry whines. It’s a bit muffled, with how he’s kissing Louis again, both of them a bit breathless with how close they are, with how Louis can’t help but arch his hips up a bit into Harry’s, just to see. Just to feel. “’m trying to seduce you. Is it working?”

Louis tilts his head back, gives a bit and lets Harry take. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know if I feel very seduced, actually.”

Harry nods. His teeth bite down on Louis’ shoulder, where the neck of his jumper has shifted a bit, giving Harry all the access he needs. His fingers fumble at the button of Louis’ skinnies, asking a little with how he pauses and waits for Louis to nod. 

He’s his own character reading Louis like a book, reading the words written light between the lines and waiting to be found.

Louis sucks in a breath at Harry’s fingers around him, once he pulls his trousers and his pants down a bit, the sofa too small to maneuver enough to take off all his clothes. He pushes his hips up, can’t help but dig his fingers in the cushion when Harry starts to move, his hand slow and steady around Louis’ cock, his eyes focused and too green and almost fictional in their intensity. 

“’m waiting for some feedback, you know,” Harry says. He twists his hand a little, and Louis is hard and aching under him, head tilted back and his jumper rucked up. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he groans. “Feedback for what?”

Harry laughs. His mouth is too pink and his hand feels too good and he laughs. He kisses Louis, soft and searching and Louis lets him. “On the seducing,” he says. “Is it working now?”

“I think,” Louis starts, biting his lip and holding back an awfully desperate noise, “I think your technique could use some work.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Harry says. “My technique seems to be doing alright for you.” 

Harry tightens his grip, stroking Louis’ cock a little tighter, a little faster, and Louis chokes a bit, from the feeling of it. “N-no,” he stutters out. “Seems a bit amateur.”

Harry gets this little furrow between his eyebrows, this frustrated grump of a thing that matches the turndown of his mouth, the frown that takes over his face. He sticks his tongue out and palms Louis’ cock harder, shifting back so he can get a better grip. He kisses Louis again, harder this time, more eager, and Louis laughs at the intensity of it. 

“Stop laughing at me,” Harry mumbles. “I’m trying to seduce you.”

“So you’ve said,” Louis gasps out, bucking his hips, moving his hands to Harry’s shoulders and digging in. “Try harder.”

Harry hums. Louis thinks he might look calculating, if he wasn’t so easy to read. If the arousal didn’t show in his eyes and the rise and fall of his chest and if the way he kissed wasn’t so needy. “What about my mouth?” Harry asks.

He lowers himself a bit so his mouth is right up against Louis’ ear, the words heavy like honey and slow as that, too.

Louis moans before he means to, the thought of it going straight to his cock, making the feeling in his spine intensify, making the tightening in his stomach even worse. “Fuck, Harry.”

Harry makes a pleased sort of noise, one that makes Louis tighten his grip, makes him scratch at Harry’s shoulders. “So would my mouth work better then?”

Louis shivers, and he fights to shake his head no. “Think you’d be a bit of an amateur at that, too,” he says. Harry bites at his jaw, at his neck, at his shoulder. “You’d, _fuck_ , you’d probably be so sloppy, wouldn’t you?”

“I give good blowjobs,” Harry says. His voice has got that sleep rasp to it, already fucked out and lazy. “Would you let me suck you?”

Louis’ legs start trembling, the start of the end really, his breath catching in his throat. “You’d have to prove it,” he tells him. “I’d make you work for it, could you even do that?”

Harry bites down again, one hand around Louis’ cock and the other stroking up his sides, his ribs. He’s heavy on top of Louis, probably feels every shake of Louis’ body when he comes, the trembles and quakes of it all. 

“I think,” Louis starts, out of breath and still feeling the aftershocks, “I think your seduction methods need some work.”

Harry groans into his neck, his fingers digging into Louis sides and his hips shoving down. He lets out a slow, desperate sounding curse and Louis feels Harry quivering on top of him, still tucked away in his trackpants, but coming all the same.

“Oh my god,” Louis says. “Oh my god.”

Harry hides his face, burrowing in the juncture of Louis’ neck and shoulder and letting out a muffled, embarrassed sort of sound. “Shut up,” he mumbles. “Please shut up.”

“ _Harry_.”

Harry pushes his face deeper, so when Louis looks down all he sees is a head full of smushed, flattened curls. “You were _teasing_ me.”

“I was,” Louis replies.

“Like, proper making fun of me,” Harry carries on. “I couldn’t help it.” He’s whining a little, and Louis can’t help but laugh at him, his shoulders shaking with it. “See, you’re still doing it.”

Louis shifts a little, pushing up at Harry’s shoulders so he can grab one of the blankets that have fallen on the floor. “Should I apologize?”

“No,” Harry says. He lifts his head up, face a little flushed and pink and satisfied. “I liked it, obviously.”

Louis can read that in the curves of Harry’s mouth. He can see the contentment written in the lazy droop of Harry’s eyelids, the dazed look in his eyes. He thumbs over where the furrow between Harry’s eyebrows was, where the frustration there has disappeared off the pages of Harry’s skin. 

He reads like a book, Harry does.

-

Louis wakes up early the next morning, as usual. The shop greets him with its creak and drips and the rustle the pages give him when he runs his fingers over them. He cleans up in the comfortable silence, sweeping away dust and wiping down the counters.

Harry emerges before the shop opens, his bare feet quiet over the wood floors. He’s in a pair of Louis’ pajama pants, a little too short, and the same jumper he had the night before. He’s somehow balancing two steaming plates in one hand and two mugs in the other, fingers stretching wide to accommodate everything. 

“Made breakfast for us,” he says, slow and easy off his tongue. “I used what I could find in the cabinets and the fridge.”

“Oh,” Louis says.

There’s sausage and eggs and hashbrowns, Louis can see. Two slices of toast shoved on the edge of the plate. Harry _cooked_ in Louis’ kitchen, the evidence laid out on the counter. 

“Was that not, like.” Harry frowns, shifting on his feet. He’s so big, so broad and tall, but he makes himself small like this, his arms crossed and his shoulders hunched. “Was that not okay?”

Louis picks up his plate. It looks amazing, smells even better. It’s been awhile since Louis’ had a breakfast like this, had someone standing in the kitchen of his flat and cooking. 

“No, it’s.” Louis tries for a smile, but it feels shaky on his face, trembling at the edges. “No, it’s absolutely fine. I. Thank you, Harry.”

“Okay,” Harry says, slow and careful but he smiles back at Louis just the same. “I’m actually a really good cook, you know. I can, like, I mean I don’t mind doing it. For you.”

They eat in the quiet of the shop, even the drip giving them some peace. Harry takes his plate and walks around the shop, through the shelves, bending at the waist as he looks for something new to read. Louis watches him, always seems to be watching him, taking in the lines in his back and the curve of his neck and the spindliness of his knees.

Harry is a prologue, Louis thinks. A beginning.

\-----

It’s raining as Louis walks through the London streets, his head ducked against the torrential downpour and his shoes squelching on the sidewalk. He’s got a bag in one hand, full of folded up jackets and a few vinyls he found at the back of the hall cupboard. 

The bar Zayn texted him isn’t too crowded, the usual lunchtime activity and booths at the back, where Louis heads. He can make out Zayn’s hair easy enough, the inky black height of it, all gelled up.

“’m not apologizing,” is the first thing he says. He slides into the booth, the bag in before him and signals for the first waiter that looks over. “So, there’s that.”

Zayn rolls his eyes. He’s a little laidback today, has only a t-shirt on and what Louis recognizes as his favorite jeans. There are bags under his eyes though, bruises dug from too little sleep.

“And also you look like shit,” Louis adds.

“Hello to you, too, Louis,” Zayn says. He tips his bottle back and drains the last of it. “How’ve you been, haven’t seen you in awhile and all that.”

Louis orders a rum and coke, staring hard at Zayn from across the table. “’m fine,” he says. “Been missing my best mate, is all. He turned into an absolute twat a while back.”

“I did _not_ ,” Zayn complains. “I just. It was a surprise, obviously. You could have fucking said something.”

“I could have,” Louis concedes. His drink gets set on the table, and he starts in on it, already feeling the need for the liquor. “Still not apologizing though.”

Zayn’s foot nudges him under the table hard. “Of course you wouldn’t,” Zayn says. “You’re a proper brat,” and Louis shrugs. 

They settle in. Neither of them give, because they don’t do that, but the silence isn’t loaded with anything, just tentative and comfortable. Zayn leans his head back against the booth, closes his eyes and deflates under Louis’ gaze, letting go of the mask he’d put up before he’d realized they’d be okay.

They always are, it seems.

“Are you okay?” Louis asks quietly. He takes in the narrow slope of Zayn’s shoulders, the weary way he opens his eyes. 

Zayn shrugs, but there’s a smile on his face, at the edges of his mouth. “Just tired,” he says. “Exhausting life of a rockstar and all that.”

“You’re insufferable,” Louis tells him.

“But you love me.”

Louis swallows. There’s a pang of something in his chest; he thinks it might be acceptance or something, the truth of such a simple fucking statement. “Yeah,” he says. Because he _does_ and it doesn’t feel like such a goddamn heavy feeling anymore. “I do. Obviously.”

Zayn smiles. This little thing that still makes Louis smile back. “I love you too, you know. Even if I act like an arsehole.” He grimaces, as if the words have pained him to say. 

They’re so fucked up, Louis thinks. The two of them. They might be clinging too hard, and it might be better if they let go entirely, but Louis won’t. He’ll cling harder, if anything, before he lets go of Zayn completely. And he knows the same of Zayn.

Maybe that was their downfall. They knew each other too well.

Louis grabs the bag from beside him and slides it across the table, big and bulky. He feels a bit nervous about it now, but he knows he has to do it. Knows that it’s better than throwing it all away. He watches Zayn untie the bag, watches the frown on his face as he starts to recognize the folded up jackets and the vinyls in the bag.

“Oh my God,” Zayn says, something like disbelief in his tone, something fragile embedded underneath it all. He looks up at Louis. “Are you serious?”

Louis shrugs, unsure. “I cleaned out the flat? Like. For the first time since. Since everything happened, really.”

“You got rid of it all?” Zayn asks.

“I just.” Louis sighs, leaning back and fiddling with his glass. “It felt awful living in there with it like that. Like, I didn’t want to do it anymore.”

Zayn presses his palms to his eyes, breathing in deep enough to move his shoulders. “This is like. Jesus, Louis, this is like proper break up shit.”

Louis frowns, fingers tightening around his glass. “We’re properly broken up, Zayn. I’m sure you remember that.” The tone is too sharp, too brittle and telling and Louis’ fingers clench around the glass until his knuckles turn white. “We’re not. Oh my god, _fuck you_.”

“Shut up for a second, okay?” Zayn says. He breathes out shaky. He reaches for his empty bottle before nabbing Louis’ drink instead, swallowing back some of it. “I’m not an idiot. I know we’re not together. But, like, you’ve just hand-delivered my shit in a _bag_ like you never want to see me again.”

Louis blinks, his head spinning a bit. “I’m not. That’s not. Would you rather I have thrown it all away?”

“No, obviously.” Zayn sits up. He looks shell-shocked at it all, staring down at the bag with wide eyes. “I. Okay. Would you. Is this, like, a goodbye?”

“What,” Louis says flatly.

“I mean. I can fuck off if you want, of course I’ll do that.” Zayn’s just _talking_ , throwing words out at Louis and watching them bounce off. “I’d do anything for you, you know that. Or, like, if you don’t want me around Harry. Or, like.”

He stares across at Louis, stupid as ever. Zayn is a book with too many words, all of them crammed together and fighting to be the ones seen. To be the ones read. Zayn is too many fucking ideas at once, scrawled out in a book too small for him. 

“It’s not a goodbye at all,” Louis says slowly. “I just wanted to get your shit out of the flat, Zayn, oh my god.” Louis sips the last of what’s left in his glass, relishing in the burn in the back of his throat. “And I’d never keep you away from Harry. I want to watch him wear you down.”

Zayn grumbles, appeased for now, as he leans back and gets comfortable again. “Don’t think ’m ever going to really like him,” he says. “He, like, has you now. It’s my job to be a possessive dick about it.”

“You still have me,” Louis points out. “I’ve only got one best mate, after all.”

Zayn smiles, smug and satisfied, finally. “S’pose so,” he says. “And I don’t even have to feed you anymore. Or clean up after you. Or listen to you whine when I accidentally spoil the ending of a book.”

“It’s such an awful thing to do,” Louis replies. “I’m still angry about _Gatsby_ , you know.”

“Everyone’s read that Lou,” Zayn tells him. “By sixth form everyone’s read it.” He laughs, small, squinting over at Louis. “Maybe I _should_ talk to Harry. We can bond over how fucking annoying you are.”

Louis smiles, kicks his foot out and connects with Zayn’s bony knee. “You love me,” he reminds him.

Zayn signals the waiter for more drinks, the bag shoved in the booth next him, less threatening now. “Yeah,” he sighs. “I really fucking do.”

\-----

A routine develops, somehow.

Louis wakes up early every morning, either that or he doesn’t sleep. He wakes up with the sun mostly, eyes blinking open just before sunrise. He wraps a blanket around his shoulders and pads up to the roof. He doesn’t bother with shoes, the cold ground waking him up a little, sending a shock through his system.

Louis stands at the railing of the roof, looking down at the quiet, dimmed streets, soon to be waking up too. He watches the sun peek over the horizon, peek through the London buildings and shine straight in Louis’ eyes. It’s cold up here, bound to be for a while yet, but Louis only pulls the blanket up, fighting against the chill raising goosebumps on his skin.

It’s quiet up here, not too quiet though, just enough that he can hear himself think. He’s still got a few hours before he needs to open up the shop, so there’s time to get a few cups of tea in him, time to clean and tidy and pick out something to read for the day. 

Louis stays on the roof until he recognizes the first signs of life. The _clank_ of a bell in the distance, the rumbling of cars starting, the smell of bread rising in the bakery down the block, about ready to start the day. London is like it’s own universe, full of characters that Louis relies on, a world that settles around Louis, a place where he can settle himself.

Harry’s usually in the kitchen when Louis heads back into the flat, sleep-rumpled and half-naked, only in a pair of trackpants or his clingy briefs. He gives Louis a sleepy grin, green eyes barely open, hair flattened on one side and pillow imprints still tinged pink on his skin.

“Morning,” he rasps. “’m making you pancakes.”

“I like pancakes,” Louis says. Harry tastes like sleep and the sweetness of pancake batter when Louis leans in and kisses him, both of them still too tired for anything more than that, lazy kissing while Harry waits for the pan to heat. “You taste good,” he adds, tugging harshly at one of Harry’s curls at the smirk that Harry gives him. “Your _mouth_ , I meant.”

Harry puts a new sign on his chair every morning before he leaves for class. The handwriting gets more obnoxious, loopy or pin-straight, and the words are always the same.

 _Harry’s chair_ it says, and Louis still thinks it looks ridiculous. But he doesn’t throw any of them away.

The bell on the door chimes behind Harry when he shuts the door, the shop saying goodbye. It seems to be waiting to greet Harry, withholding the welcoming creaks and groans drips when he steps through, almost as if it’s waiting to make sure Harry will actually come back. Louis finds pieces of Harry left behind in the shop though, a beanie or one of his papers, a lost glove or a book he’s put down in the wrong place. Louis thinks it’s Harry’s way of claiming things, leaving little bits of himself behind, and Louis doesn’t think it will be long before the shop claims him back. 

Teeth and dimples and charm. 

\- 

Nights are still the worst, in a way. But they’re not too bad.

Louis curls up in his chair, the cushions soft and comforting around him, his legs tucked up with a book resting on them. He likes to re-read his favorites during the nights when he can’t sleep, likes the comfort of familiarity and revisiting a world he already knows, a world that’s already welcomed him. 

He hears Harry’s knocks late into the night, the soft-knuckled greeting against the door, his quiet demand to be let in.

He’s a sleepy, rumpled looking boy, sagging with the weight of his backpack over his shoulder, his exhaustion displayed through the weary, slow smile that stretches across this face. The way he gives when Louis presses their lips together, his body pliant and malleable when Louis tugs him inside.

“’m really tired,” Harry says. “You ready for bed?”

Louis can feel the energy thrumming under his skin, can feel the buzzing in his head, the promise of little or no sleep tonight. He’d love for sleep to come, but he knows it won’t, not yet. But Harry’s staring at him, sleepy eyes and sagging shoulders, and Louis couldn’t say no to him the first time he met Harry, can’t seem to say no now.

“Yeah,” he says. “C’mon, let’s put us to bed, then.”

They skip the second and the fifth and the seventh steps, Harry’s boots heavier and more sluggish than Louis’ barefoot ones. Harry fumbles with his clothes, stumbling through the flat as he throws them off, collapsing in the bed in just his briefs. He takes up more than half before Louis rolls him to one side, his limbs sprawled and flung everywhere. He burrows under the covers, the newer ones Louis bought himself, pulling them up over his head. 

“Now you,” he says, muffled under all that, his face probably smushed into the pillow. “You said you were tired, too.”

Louis sighs and crawls into the bed. It’s impossible to relegate himself to just one side, not when Harry attaches himself almost immediately, his nose nuzzling into Louis’ hip, his arms stretching across his waist. 

“You gonna blow me?” Louis asks, just to see the slow, easy smile on Harry’s face, pushing away at the tired lines for just a minute. “I think that would put me to sleep very quickly.”

Harry bites at his skin, his mouth moving lazy and unhurried. “Don’t start,” he murmurs. “I’ll let you fuck my mouth in the morning,” he promises. “Might fall asleep if I tried it now.” He nuzzles Louis’ groin though, makes some pathetic apologetic noise from somewhere in the back of his throat. 

“Sexy,” Louis tells him, but he pets Harry’s hair as he says it, the fondness bleeding through his voice no matter how hard he fights it back. “I want eggs too.”

“Eggs and a blowjob,” Harry says, voice honey-slow and just as thick. “Sounds like a fair deal. ’m gonna be a lawyer, you know.”

“Oral arguments are your strong point,” Louis agrees.

Harry hums, nearly asleep from the sound of it. “’m a fast learner, remember?”

“I remember,” Louis assures him. “Go to sleep now.”

Harry rolls over, blinking sleepily up at Louis with a frown on his face. “I can’t yet,” he says. “Not until you do. Otherwise you’ll sneak out of bed and spend the whole night downstairs reading.”

Harry is an easily read character. He shows mostly everything on his face, in the curve of his mouth, the sincerity behind his eyes. Louis forgets there are hidden parts of him, little observant parts that he doesn’t show. It makes Louis wonder what other parts of himself Harry is hiding, makes Louis wants to read all his lines, even the hidden ones, the ones scribbled and cramped in the margins. 

Harry smiles, smug, when Louis rolls his eyes and shifts down so both he and Harry are lying down in the bed, their legs twined together and Harry grabbing hold of Louis’ fingers, intertwining those too. “You said you were tired,” he says.

“I am,” Louis tells him. He can feel it under his skin, the exhaustion moving sluggish and heavy through him. “I just don’t think I can sleep.”

Harry rolls Louis over to his side, presses his bigger, broader body up against Louis’ back and curls an arm around his waist. “I wanna try something.”

“Thought you said you were too tired,” Louis teases, and he feels Harry’s laugh more than he hears it, the puff of laughter against his neck. “You gonna fuck me to sleep?”

“Oh my god,” Harry mutters. He’s probably pinking up at the words, too tired to do anything about them but enjoying them nonetheless. “You’re awful, you know?” 

He kisses Louis’ cheek, his jaw, the back of his neck, smiles up against Louis’ skin, this sleepy little boy taking up too much room in this huge bed. 

“’m gonna tell you a story,” Harry murmurs. “That used to work on me when I couldn’t sleep.”

“How old were you when that worked?” Louis asks. “I’m guessing four or five.”

Harry digs his fingers in Louis’ side, just enough that Louis’s squirming a little. “No _teasing_ ,” he whines, bucking his hips lazy. “You can tease me in the morning. It’s time for a story now.”

Louis nods. He settles on the bed, closes his eyes and feels the rise and fall of Harry’s breathing behind him, feels his body heat and smells his ridiculous fruity shampoo. “Go on.”

“There was once a boy named Harry,” Louis hears, “and all Harry wanted to do was make people happy.” 

Harry waits for a reaction, continues when Louis doesn’t give him one. “He’d do anything for it, to make the people around him smile, you know? He’d make them presents, and give them his things, and make silly faces until they laughed.”

“Your face is always silly,” Louis murmurs, only for Harry to pinch him, light, on his ribs. 

“And when Harry grew up, he still wanted that. He still wanted people to be happy.” Harry shifts a little, grips Louis a little tighter. “Then one day, he met a boy. A boy who carried around a billion stories wherever he went.”

Louis breathes out slow, waiting.

“And Harry didn’t think the boy knew, like, how many stories he was carrying around. They must have been heavy, but the boy never showed it, never complained about having to hold so many stories at once.” Harry’s voice is low, raspy and calm and close. “Harry wanted to make him happy the first time he saw him.”

Louis squeezes his eyes shut even tighter, until it hurts a little with the effort. 

“The boy let Harry hold some of the stories, but it wasn’t enough,” Harry says. “Harry wanted to share those stories with the boy. He wanted to. Wanted to know all the ones that made the boy happy, and made him sad, and made him angry.” Harry kisses Louis’ neck, skims his fingers over Louis’ stomach, gentle and comforting. “He wanted nothing more than to know why the boy loved the stories so much, and. And eventually Harry wanted to become a story the boy loved too.”

“What kind of story?” Louis asks.

Harry hums, thoughtful. “The kind of story the boy would re-read, hopefully. Like, at night when he couldn’t sleep. The kind of story, that would, like, keep him company and make him feel good all the time.”

“How many pages would he be?”

“He’d be as many pages as the boy wanted to read,” Harry tells him. “He’d never run out of pages if the boy wanted to keep him.”

Louis keeps his eyes shut, but he squeezes Harry’s hand, scoots back a little and presses closer. “I suppose that sounds like a nice sort of story to be,” he says.

Harry laughs, quiet and familiar now against Louis’ ear. “You suppose,” he repeats, slow and drowsy and heavy. “I s’pose that’ll work for now.”

Louis listens to Harry’s breathing, how it evens out. Harry’s warm behind him, soft and rumpled and more than half-asleep. A sleepy boy that’s claimed half of Louis’ bed now, claimed a chair in Louis’ shop and the entirety of the kitchen.

Louis falls asleep, easy.

\-----

“You know,” Harry starts, and Louis lifts his head up from the book he’s reading. He turns his attention to where Harry’s making dinner at the stove, apron tied around his waist and his curls pulled back. “You’ve never told me.”

Louis blinks, head still in a different world, a different universe with different characters. Harry’s like an anchor though, pulling Louis back down into this story, this world. “Haven’t told you what?”

Harry sighs. He’s got sauce on his cheek, more splattered on his apron. “Your favorite book,” he says. “I know you’ve got one, you just don’t want to say.”

Louis stares up at Harry, the little bow of his lips, the lines by his eyes, the dimple hidden away in his cheek. “Is it awfully cheesy of me to say you?” Louis asks him.

“Unbearably cheesy,” Harry says, but he’s smiling, trying to hide it but Louis can see it in his eyes too. “I think you’re trying to tease me.”

“I’m not,” Louis tells him. “I don’t care, you’re my favorite. I could read you for hours, you know.” He walks over to Harry, puts his hands on his skinny waist, fingers digging in there. “I think,” he says, “there is a universe hiding inside you. There is a world behind your awful, green eyes, you know. I can see it when you smile.”

“You can’t,” Harry tells him. 

“I _can_ ,” Louis argues. “You’re my favorite book to read.”

“Really cheesy,” Harry says. 

“I don’t care,” Louis replies. “You are my favorite story.” 

Maybe that’s Harry’s flaw, Louis realizes. He’s a book. He’s a flawed, imperfect universe, like all books are. Like all the books stacked neatly on the shelves in Louis’ shop, used and worn and wise. That’s what makes them real. 

That’s what makes them loved. 

Harry is a book that Louis won’t ever finish reading. They are two characters in one universe, building their own story from the ground up.

\-----


End file.
